Last Love in Constantinople – a tarot-novel by Milorad Pavic

As Seen By Reviewers

(Number one book on the bestseller list 1994 and the novel of the year in Yugoslavia)

Jasmina Mihajlovic (Pobjeda and NIN)
"It is an exciting, swift and tense novel, which reads easily, in a single drive, a single vigour and joy, and a strong lyric and erotic force... I think this will be the most widely-read of Pavic's books."

Zoran Gluscevic (Politika)
"Notwithstanding the age in which the story is set, the manuscript is as though written by the wise hand of ancient, sacral, mythical and magical high priests and magicians, who hold in their hand the secret of man's fate, and open it only after great exploits and ordeals have been accomplished, when man can change nothing any more, but only witness his own destiny... Pavic has told us a tale of one age, but it is a tale for all time."

Cedomir Mirkovic (Borba)
"This is the fourth time now that Milorad Pavic manages to achieve in the form of the novel the ideal of modern literature: a new, personalized narrative form and a heady story with a multitude of symbolic meanings."

Aleksandar Jerkov (Borba)
"In Last Love In Constantinople we find that wonderful literary imagination and poetically inspired language which secure Pavic a special place in modern literature... A place in every prose anthology."

Milisav Savic (Borba)
"Fortune-telling means relying on the future... The Tarot never quite surrenders to attempts at systematization; something in it always escapes us. In this novel too, perhaps more even than in Pavic's previous works, there always remains something that escapes our interpretation. The sweetest dishes are those which, no matter how much we eat them, always offer a new flavour."

Vasa Pavkovic (Politika)
"Last Love In Constantinople, Milorad Pavic's fourth novel, stands shoulder to shoulder with Dictionary of the Khazars... An effective bestseller, the kind of book our literature craves."

Mirjana Mitrovic (Zena)
"Last Love In Constantinople is a novel graced by exquisite, authentic eroticism... Some wise men know the woman's soul better than she knows herself. I believe Milorad Pavic is one of those men."

Djordje Pisarev (Dnevnik)
"Books like this offer dreams to choose from, just like a rich bazaar."

Velimir Curguz Kazimir (Nada)
"Fortune-telling cannot exist without the smell and contours of catastrophe. I have in mind that form of divination which is not just a card game but an obligatory confirmation of the age we live in... Reading the sediment on the bottom of a coffee cup, once a charming form of fortune-telling, has today taken on the proportions of a fight for survival. That is why Last Love In Constantinople, perhaps quite unconsciously, represents through adapted and modified tarot cards yet another form of mertamorphosis, not only literary but also social."