Inner Side of the Wind, by Milorad Pavic

PRESS BOOK / Edited by Jasmina Mihajlovic

Reviews

USA REVIEWS

W.S. Di Piero (New York Times Book Review, 13. VI '93.)

Robert Taylor (Boston Globe, 12. V 1993.)

Carey Harrison (San Francisco Chronicle, 30. V 1993)

Los Angeles Time Book Review (16. V 1993)

Dominik Di Bernardi (Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 VI 1993.)

Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York 1993.

Robert Coover (New York Times Book Review, 12. VI 1992.)

World Literature Today , Summer 1992, vol.66 N.3

FRENCH REVIEWS

Alain Bosquet (Magazine litteraire, No 302, Paris, Septembre 1992)

Catherine Argand (Lire, Paris, Novembre 1992)

Jean-Baptiste Harang (Liberation, Paris 10.VIII 1992)

Irene Berelowitch (Telerama, Paris 30. IX 1992.)

ITALIAN REVIEWS

Italo Vanni (Il resto del Carlino, Bologna,22. III 1993.)

Paolo Cesaretti (L'independente, 13.III 1993)>

Dario Fertilio(Corriere della sera, 28.II 1993)

Pietro Treccagnoli (Il mattino, Napoli 27. II 1993)

Roberto Sorgo (Messaggero veneto, 30. V 1993)

Francesco Fantasia (Acaldo 1993)

SPANISH REVIEWS

Tiempo, Madrid, 7.III 1994.

La Gaceta Regional, Salamanca, 4.II 1994.

E. Romero (Diario de Teruel, Teruel, 19.III 1994.

Exspansión, Madrid , 12. III 1994.

Mariano Monge Juarez (Informacion, Alicante, 31. III 1994.)

Victoriano Crémer (Diario de León, Leon, 1.IV 1994.)

Eugenio Fuentes (La Nueva España, Oviedo, 5. III 1994.)

Miguel Bayón (El Pais, Madrid, 7.V 1994.)

REVIEWS IN GREECE

USA REVIEWS

W.S. Di Piero (New York Times Book Review, 13. VI '93):

Pavic dissolves the crystalline structure of conventional storytelling into fluid competing versions of truth. But he also possesses an ironist's supreme ability both to operate and witness his own narrative contraptions... "The Inner Side of the Wind" is a speedy book in which every sentence is what one character calls a "fabula rasa", an empty story crying out to be inhabited...

I don't want to make this book sound like an a historical, post-modern divertissement. In Mr. Pavic's universe, all is inconclusive, gaily but fatefully inconclusive. Hero's story is wracked by the uncertainties of life in the Balkans in the early 20th century. Leander's story never lets us forget the terrifying events of its time: invading Turkish warlords, flights of refugees and famine... And prodigies of nature animate the story with a disturbing pagan vivacity: icy water that can learn languages, birds whose odor kills other birds in flight, a barn owl that no one ever sees but that knows when the hearer of its voice will die.

When the adult Leander finally learns to read, he discovers the tale of the two famous lovers. "Perhaps Leander swam through time", he tells his teacher, "not through water". That is the journey Mr. Pavic plots for us in this marvelous book.

Robert Taylor (Boston Globe, 12. V 1993):

Considering the horrors currently emerging from Serbia, it is useful to be reminded that spark of humanity still smoulders there. The Serbian author Milorad Pavic's "The Inner Side of the Wind" transforms the legend of Hero and Leander into soaring verbal music that bridges two shores of time, our own and the late 17th century...

Pavic pursue his trademark sleight-of-hand: the reader can begin either with Hero's tale set in Belgrade and Prague in the 1920s and '30s, or, by flipping the book upside down and reading dorm the back, Leander's narrative set in 17th century southeastern Europe. Thus the shape of the novel duplicates the shape of the legend, since the latter deals with the lovers progressing toward each other. They meet in Pavic's novel in the exact center of the book...

Pavic's version does not suggest Byron, but Marc Chagall painting of weightless lovers floating gravity-free outside time... But you don't have to open Pavic with a classical dictionary et your elbow. The playful allusions are clever; still, the rules of realistic fiction, though stretched, ultimately prevail. The stories sprouting from the author's field of dreams are sturdily constructed and populated by plausible characters and exhibit ample suspense...

In a dark, tragicomic realm of barbarism, beauty and paradox, where "even in the century before last" physicists knew "that there were two eternities, not one", Pavic's prodigal imagery propels the lovers toward their twinned destinies.

Carey Harrison (San Francisco Chronicle, 30. V 1993):

The dismemberment of Yugoslavia is echoed in several ways in "The Inner Side of the Wind", a novel by Milorad Pavic, who was perhaps that country's most important writer.

One half of the novel is set in an 18th century Balkan world overrun by foreign armies, reminding us how continuos slaughter has been in this troubled corner of Europe.

Los Angeles Time Book Review (16. V 1993):

Which way to start? Hero's story has most of the jokes, dreams and word games (plus a tale that she has written, about a condemned man who exits his soul to inhabit a woman's). Leander's story is more straightforward. A mason, he wanders the no man's land between the Austrian and Turkish armies and builds churches while everything is being destroyed. Pavic gives us a clue to Yugoslavia's current bloodletting – its centuries of being and chewed by rival empires – even as he demonstrates, both in the novel and by writing it, that the bloodletting isn't all.

Dominik Di Bernardi (Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 VI 1993):

Milorad Pavic may be one of Europe'premier fiction writers... His debut, The Dictionary of the Khazars, was a "lexicon" novel in which the reader composed a story from the entries in a mock-encyclopedia on a fictional community.

His second novel, Landscape Painted With Tea,presented a cross-word puzzle as a map through his novelistic territory.

In each case, the very notion of the Book was exploded, for Pavic invited his readers to compose and impose their own story lines upon his fictions. Each book multiplied between its covers and became as numerous as its readers.

Pavic refines his experiments in his third equally startling and most accessible novel, The Inner Side of the Wind, or the Novel of Hero and Leander, in which he literally transforms the book as an object that we hold between our hands.

He offers us a twin, intricately related tale named after a pair of mythological lovers, who in their Slavic incarnation are separated not merely by the Hellespont but by two centuries... And it is to Pavic's great credit that he invests his high-brow literary experiment with the giddy, anything-goes delights of a low-brow pop fantasy... And then there's his trademark style, a folk surrealism that creates a word where rivers have "aquascripts", signatures visible only two birds, and the air can be as "quiet as a freshly washed soul". The most radically transformed dimension in Pavic's world is time... This temporal fluidity is reflected in the history of the region itself. Pavic draws power from the centuries of turmoil in this land "between two empires ant three faiths, among languages that blow through there like the winds"...

Most important, by calling into question the very notion of whole and half, The Inner Side of the Wind simultaneously proposes a provocative vision both of the world and of the Book.

Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York 1993:

This book can be read from either front cover or, by flipping it upside down, the back cover. The choice is yours. Milorad Pavic, the brilliantly innovative author whose first novel, the phenomenal Dictionary of the Khazars, inspired readers to look at literature in a new and unique way, and whose second, Landscape Painted With Tea, virtually created a new set of directions by which to interpret fiction, now gives us The Inner Side of the Wind, a magically entertaining love story that spans two centuries...

In the playfully inventive manner in which it suggests new ways for language to shape human thought, The Inner Side of the Wind is everything we have come to expect from this remarkable writer: pure Pavic!

Robert Coover (New York Times Book Review, 12. VI 1992):

Through print's long history there have been countless strategies to counter the line's power, from marginalia and footnotes to the creative innovations of novelists like Laurence Sterne, James Joyce, Raymond Queneau, Julio Cortazar, Italio Calvino and Milorad Pavic.

World Literature Today , Summer 1992, vol.66 N.3:

Pavic is in the company of writers (Borges, Cortasar, and Eco come to mind) who have blazed new trails in modern fiction. Moreover, his stylistic brilliance lends his works a quality that in itself makes him well worth reading...

FRENCH REVIEWS

Alain Bosquet (Magazine litteraire, No 302, Paris, Septembre 1992):

Il est peu d'ecrivains, de rang europeen, qui savent, a l'exemple d'Ismail Kadare ou Peter Estarhazy, conjuguer avec autant de bonheur l'imaginaire et le sens de l'absurde, que le romancier serbe Milorad Pavic. On se souvient, avec ravissement et terreur – ce qui doit lui plaire – du coup de tonnerre qu'avait provoque, en 1988, son premier roman, aujourd'hui traduit en vingt-quatre langues, Le dictionnaire khazar. Jamias rien de semblable n'avait paru, si on excepte les grandes fantasies a moitie esoteriques, de la Renaissance... L'envers du vent ou le roman de Hero et Leandre se presente sous la forme inusitee d'un livre en deux parties egales: on lit la premiere jusqu'au milieu, puis on renverse le tome et on lit la seconde a partir de la quatrieme page de couverture, a l'envers. On part donc de deux point dans l'espace – et dans le recit-avec une intrigue differente et, arrive au centre du livre, les heros se rencontrent en une confrontation fatale... Passes dans la legende intemporelle, Leandre et Hero n'acceptent pas la notion derisoire du temps. Ils se meuvent dans un autre systeme: ils sont nos contamporains, mais ne sont pas contemporains d'eux memes...

Bien entendu, les deux moities du livre s'interpenetrent et sont le complement l'une et l'autre ou, si on veut bien, l'antidote. On pet aussi dir qu'elle sont l'une et l'autre complementaires ou contradictoires. Les trouvailles comiques ou folles sont legion. Les coups de theatre abondent... Dans cette oeuvre petulente et hors du commun, l'imagination remporte une belle victorie sur l'absurde.

Catherine Argand (Lire, Paris, Novembre 1992):

Milorad Pavic croit aux miracless... Ils s'aiment, pourtant, trois siecles les separent. Cet etonnant roman de l'ecrivain serbe n'a pas de fin: il a deux debuts... Inveraisemblables, merveilleusement baroques, les reves et le savoir de ce conteur sont comme de longs voyages. On en revient couvert de poussiere, des paillettes bleues et or au fond des yeux.

L'ecrivain de Belgrade cultive avec tenacite ce qu'il appelle "la reversibilite de l'art". Sculpture et tableaux, remarque-t-il, varient selon l'angle, le regarde et la lumiere. C'est ainsi qu'il ecrit sur la lisiere des choses. La, ou la certitude porte en elle sa contra diction... Sans doute est-ce de cette diversite, de ce gout pour l'incertain que Pavic tire son veritable tresor: ecrire de la prose avec poesie.

Jean-Baptiste Harang (Liberation, Paris 10.VIII 1992):

Milorad Pavic a fait in livre reversible qui, lorsqu'on le lance en l'air, retombe pile sur la bonne face: "L'envres du vent"... "L'envers du vent" n'a guere d'endroit. Le livre de Milorad Pavic se lit en depit du bon sens, ce bon sens qui voudrait que l'on commence les livres au debut et qu'on les termine par la fin, mais apres tout ni le depit ni le bon sens n'ont jamais ete les garants de la meilleur litterature... L'historie commence sur l'avers et le revers du livre, deux histoires, elle se rejoignent au milieu sur une page pleue a l'endroit meme (mais c'est peut-etre un envers) ou l'on peut echanger sa mort avec celle d'un autre, Hero et Leandre ne s'en privent pas. Le plus sage est de lire le roman une fois et demie, afin que chacune des deux histoires soit lue apres l'autre. Ce qui ne dit pas par ou commencer.

Irene Berelowitch (Telerama, Paris 30. IX 1992):

Comme certaines maisons, L'envers du vent possede deux entrees et une seule sortie, au milieu de l'immeuble... Et une double mort, vers laquelle les heros, chacun dans son temps, se dirigent pour se retrouver. De l'un a l'autre, qui nagent "a travers les vagues du temps", il y a un ocean d'images tantot delicieuses, tantot absurdes, etranges, incomprehensibles, un recit vagabond en depit d'une chronologie apparente, un fouillis des signes, de mysteres, de Turcs, de Hongrois, de Bosniaques, de guerres, de religions, de voyages et de references Et Belgrade la cosmopolite, qui distille, dans ce long reve accidente si finemant ecrit, sa torpeur estivale et son passe tourmeente.

ITALIAN REVIEWS

Italo Vanni (Il resto del Carlino, Bologna,22. III 1993):

Ecco un piccolo libero che si legge, diremo cosi, a diritto e a rovescio.

... L'autore, Milorad Pavic, sia scrittore dai molti versi. Vogliamo dire che egli va e viene nelle sue pagine inusuali dal passato al presente, dalla favola alla realta, dal senso comune alla poetica insenstezza, dalla gravita al capriccio, mutando nome e luogo nella piu straordinaria fantasmagoria di parole che si possa immaginare. Cio sa bene il lettore che, alla ricerca di qualche incontro felice nella Babele letteraria contemporanea, si e imbattuto in questo scrittore... La cui immaginazione proliferante cui si adegua una scrittora mutevole come l'aria, non sommerge il lettore, bensi lo guida con soave magistero nel labirintico tracciato della fantasia e della storia... Infine diremo che, si, sull'altra riva dell' Aditiatico, dove imperversa il male civile, la poesia riparata nel cuore di un uomo e ancora viva... Cosi la poesia resiste ai colpi di canone e alla barbaria.

Paolo Cesaretti (L'independente, 13.III 1993):

Separati nel tempo, Ero e Leandro lo sono anche nell'asseto grafico del testo, dove le due storie si leggono specularmente e non s'incontrano mai. Il libro e rovesciabile, con due inizi... Ma ricco e il sistema di corrispondeze tra le due parti, tanto da richiedere una seconda lettura per essere degustato appieno: come accade con cibi o vini specialmente aromatici. Per Pavic, come per Brodskij, sono piu "le onde del tempo" che quelle del mare a separare Europa e Asia, Ero e Leandro. L'ide si inventa letterariamente nel suo Leandro, che construisce chiese destinate a esser distrutte dagli eserciti in lotta, e la dsipone secondo una geometria mistica percepibile solo dll'alto. Siti come Zica, Morava, Smederevo, Slankamen, Drenovica – il loro suono puo esserci oggi tragicamente familiare – fanno da snodo a una gigantesca "theta" la lettera iniziale di Theotokos, la "Madre di Dio" dei bizantini.

Dario Fertilio(Corriere della sera, 28.II 1993):

HERO E LEANDRO, DALLA SERBIA ALL'ETERNITA'

Forse che i libri hanno vari ingressi, e si dimostrano sensibili al sesso di chi legge? Certo, da quando il serbo Milorad Pavic si e messo a compilare i suoi romanzi labirintici, enigmistici, barocchi. Sono best-seller internazionali, definiti da qualcuno "capolavori del ventunesimo secolo". Miniere di citazioni giochetti, incastri. Opere come il Dizionario dei Chazari, che hanno la versione femminile e quella maschile, e promettono addirittura di far innamorare lettori e lettrici delle due meta. Oppure libri-cruciverba, come il Paesaggio dipinto con il te, que si prestano ad esser letti in orizzontale o in varticale, e il cui finale si puo costruire a piacimento. Anche Il lato interno del vento offre una vasta rassegna di illusionismi... Hero e Leandro, due nomi presi in prestito da un'antica favola orientale sul tipo delle Mille e una notte, potranno infatti riconoscersi solo nell' eternita. In primo luogo, e ovvio, perche appartengono a due epoche diverse. E poi perche la letteratura di Pavic si puo definire un'ossesiva lotta contro il tempo.

Pietro Treccagnoli (Il mattino, Napoli 27. II 1993):

Alle tecniche ludiche affianchiamo una firte propensione per l'enigma, per le strutture a scatole cinesi, le metafore barocche e le magie della cultura popolare abiamo il primo profilo dell'ars narrandi del piu noto scrittore serbo di questi anni, Milorad Pavic... Per venire a capo di una serie di opere che si fondano su questa ingarbuglata matassa di poetiche, in molti hanno tirato in ballo Borges (e ti pareva), Calvino o qualcuno dei soliti sudamericani maestri del realismo magico. Sono chaiamate in correita, necessarie, ma non sufficienti. Pavic, dalla sua Belgrado, a meta strada tra Praga e Bisanzio, riannodai fili di diverse letterature cresciute insieme tra sconti e matrimoni. Lo fa dimenticare la sua discendenza dagli splendori slavi e greci, mediteranei e ortodosi...

Roberto Sorgo (Messaggero veneto, 30. V 1993):

Un nuovo, magico romanzo di Milorad Pavic. Vento di sogno... Ritorna il magico mondo di Milorad Pavic. Lo scritore serbo racconta questa volta, a modo suo, la celebre vicenda di Hero e Leandro... Da leggere prima di addormentarsi, per essere certi di sognare.

Francesco Fantasia (Acaldo 1993):

Il lato interno del vento, l'ultima fatica narrativa di Milorad Pavic, grande studioso del barocco slavo, gia paragonato da recensori e critici a Borges, Calvino, Garcia Marquez per i suoi libri definiti di volta in volta "anticonformisti", "geniali", "euriditi", con una struttura "labirintica che rende possibile una letturacircolare"... Simile a una composizione prismatica ruotante, Il lato interno del vento si regge sull'impianto di due storie parallele che formano un unico libro con due ingressi e una sola viad'uscita... All'intuizione borgesiana dello smontaggio e della disarticolazione della storia condotti con l'intento di cogliere il nucleo, l'aleph di ogni possibile e durevole saggezza. Pavic aggiunge oggi un'oirginale variante. La variante dell'autonomia delle storie partorie dalla memoria e dal sogno dei secoli: storie e vicende capaci di sostituire in mondo assai degno quelle che si sono autenticamente svolte nel calendario della civilta... Il progetto dello scrittore di Belgrado ha un'ambizione particolare:quella di restituire il colore della complessa cultura dei Balcani, dove lingue, costumi, idee religiose si mescolano in una stratificazione di secoli... Pavic ammete di sperare in una sorta di "impero spirituale" dell'Est, capace di favorire la convivenza tra Oriente e Occodente... Ma si puo sempre chiudere il libro, per riaprirlo quando se ne ha bisogno. Perche, parola del serbo Pavic, leggere non e altro che prendere una vitamina, assumere un antidoto contro l'insostenibile debolezza dell'essere...

E'un attacco diretto alla struttura del romanzo classico, quello di Pavic.

SPANISH REVIEWS

Tiempo, Madrid, 7.III 1994:

Milorad Pavic, escritor serbio y una de las grandes figuras de la literatura mundial, tras el éxito de su Diccionario jázaro, publica La cara interna del viento (Espasa Calpe), una párabola que se desarrola en un escenario de la más cruda actualidad: los Balcanes.

La Gaceta Regional, Salamanca, 4.II 1994:

Milorad Pavic es uno de los más destacados escritores serbios de nuestro tiempo.. Nominado para el Nobel, la mayoria de su obra ha sido traducida a varias lenguas...Lo impecable del estilo contribuye a hacer la lectura doblemente gratificante.

E. Romero (Diario de Teruel, Teruel, 19.III 1994:

Asî hoy podemos hablar de conceptos como el de legibilidad: la capacidad que genera un libro, en cuanto objeto, para dejarese leer. Y no es indiferente cuál sea esta para el resultado final... Pavic ha escrito una novela mágica, preñada de referencias intertextuales...Y ambos habrán de encontrarse en la cara interna del viento que es la que queda seca mientras el viento sopla a través de la Huvia y que tal vez no sea sino el viento de nuestra memoria...yo he elegido el de alternar de manera paralela los capîtulos de uno y otro relato en un intento, no se si vano, de superar la linealidad de la escritura.

Exspansión, Madrid , 12. III 1994:

Ahora que Serbia es un paîs de actualidad, aparece en España la obra de su escritor más importante, Milorad Pavic... Pavic realiza una sorpredente condensación de leyendas serbias, de tradiciones balcánicas y de los restos de una antigua sabidurîa. Su estilo es muy caracterîstico, repleto de detalles poéticos y realistas.

Mariano Monge Juarez (Informacion, Alicante, 31. III 1994):

No obstante, Milorad Pavic ha consegido igeniosamente que dos novelas muy distintas en su tema sean perfectamente simétricas...No en vano, Milorad Pavic ha sido nominado recientemente para el Premio Nobel de Literatura.

Victoriano Crémer (Diario de León, Leon, 1.IV 1994):

Milorad Pavic es tal vez poco conocido entre los lectores españoles , y sin embargo figura entre los nombres más acreditados de la novelîstica europea de nuestro tiempo. Se le considera, con absoluta justicia el escritor serbio más importante de la actualidad y este libro, partido por gala en dos, mitológicamente atenido a las sugestiones de la leyenda griega de Hero y Leandro le sitúan para nosotros, recién llegados a su conocimiento, entre los escritores de más obligado comercio, tanto por la singularidad y originalidad de sus planteamientos novelîsticos, como por el lenguaje nutrido de expansiones lîricas, de recurrencias surrealistas y de profundas meditaciones, en las que sobrenadan apelaciones humorîsticas de desgarrada ironîa... Confieso que como lector empecinado ma he sentido transladado, por la fuerza de una imaginación absolutamente liberada de preceptos académicos, en un mundo de soberbios despropósitos, como cuando, para expresar la influencia de un personaje carismático... En un tiempo de confusión cultural como el que estamos padeciendo en España, sospecho que por el desbocado principio del intervencionismo, con un lamentable desbarajuste en algunas programaciones editoriales, en las que priva acaso el espîritu de promoción comercial más que el de mecenazgo, este texto de Milorad Pavic, tan oportunamente incorporado por Espasa-Calpe a sus Colecciones literarias, bien vale un aplauso agradecido.

Eugenio Fuentes (La Nueva España, Oviedo, 5. III 1994):

La historia tiene una larga tradición literaria y a Pavic le sirve para urdir un complejo juego sobre la identidad, los principios masculino y femenino, los sueños, el tiempo y el viento, la eternidad y la muerte... Una espléndida novela.

Miguel Bayón (El Pais, Madrid, 7.V 1994.)

La cara interna del viento, o por otro nombre La novela de Hero y Leandro, incide de nuevo en la pasión de Pavic por constatar que contra el horror sólo cabe la persistencia en proclamar las humildes verdades y, sobre todo, proclamarlas con palabras sabias y sabrosas, y con humor a espuertas. Es libro que se puede empezar por el principio o por el final, porque no importa cuál sea cuál: las historias de Leandro y Hero se complementan, aunque una relate las peripecias de un albañil – un apasionado por construir, aunque la época se oponga con toda violencia – de un siglo XVIII convulsionado por el choque entre lo austrohúngaro y lo turco, y la otra parte narre la vida de una profesora belgradesa de francés en nuestros dias...Contra el horror... palabras sabias.

REVIEWS IN GREECE

"Serbian writer of the future", as press in Greece says, Mr Milorad Pavic, visited Athens in late April 1994 at the invitation of the Greek Association for International Cultural Relations. Almost all newspapers, Athenian and Greek, wrote about his visit and stay.

"Awaiting a Common Dream" (Katimerini, 31 March 1994) was one of the first to announce Mr Pavic's arrival in Athens. A series of biographical stories followed, with telling titles – "21st Century Writer To Visit Athens" (Ethnos, 31 March; Estia, 31 March; Elefteri Ora, 31 March; Kerdos, 7 April; Mesimvrini, 12 April); "Serb Literature 'Envoy' in Athens" (Imerisia, 5 April); "Honorable Citizen in Athens" (Elefterotipia, 31 March, 13 April, 14 April); "Chazar Writer in Athens" (Ependitis, 10 April). Numerous Greek journals wrote about Pavic's visit, lectures and interviews in Athens – among them Pondiki, 31 March; Mesimvrini, 31 March, 12 April, 14 April, 15 April, 25 April; Elefteria Larisas, 31 March; Avgi, 1 April, 12 April, 15 April ("The Balkans Have Mouth to Give Humanity"); Niki, 1 April, 8 April ("Writer Who Celebrates the Byzantine Empire"), 12 April, 25 April; Ta Nea, 13 April ("A Return to Homer"); Elefteros, 4 April; Rizospastis, 5 April, 12 April; Apojevmatini, 7 April, 12 April; Avriani, 10 April, 12 April; Athens News, 8 April, 10 April, 15 April; Elefteros Tipos, 9 April, 25 April; Thessaloniki, 9 April; Katimerini, 7 April, 14 April ("Pavic's Vision of Modern Literature") and 23 April, reporting on television program Night Visitor, of Greece's Channel One, in which Pavic spoke of the actual situation in former Yugoslavia, the Byzantine culture and his ancestry.

Earlier on, in January this year, Greek magazine Mesimvrini published an article entitled "Serbian Candidate for Nobel Prize" (28 January). The Greek translation of Pavic's novel "Inner Side of the Wind" by Ms Gaga Rosic had just been published by Estia Publishing House and after two month had a new edition. The writer gave an interview to journalist Anastasia Lambria on the occasion. It was published under the title "The Last Byzantine Writer".

Mr Pavic held a press conference on 11 April. He emphasized the important place Greece held in his books. He recalled his visits to Thessaloniki, Halkidiki and the Holy Mount, saying they were described in the first hundred pages of "Landscape Painted with Tea". The work talked of the life of monks, of those who live together – solidaries, and those who live alone, solitaries. While most writers belonged to the first of these, Mr Pavic said his place was apart, among particular and original individuals. "It's a fact that most people say the novel is slowly dying off. I think otherwise. I have tried to see whether it was the novel that wasn't right, or whether it was the way one reads it. A novel shouldn't be read in a one-track manner, but as in "Landscape Painted with Tea" – like a crossword puzzle, horizontally and vertically, with two beginnings and end in the middle, as the case is in my novel "Inner Side of the Wind." (To Paron, 17 April).

"On 12 April at Plaka Greek Company for the environment protection and cultural inheritance held a promotion of the Greek translation of Inner Side of the Wind. Milorad Pavic spoke on the theme of The Beginning and End of the Novel, while Greek writer Takis Teodoropulos opened the event with his address on Defense of the Novel." (Mesimvrini, 21 April)

"Inner Side of the Wind is a mixture of Byzantine mysticism and the wealth of Balkan myths and legends. The writer found his model and inspiration in a thousand year old lyrical love story. On Hero and Leander by grammarian Museum. Leander swims through giant waves to reach his beloved Hero, when her brother puts up a lantern in the see and attracts him into deep water, then putting the light out and leaving him to drown. The writer creates two stories whose ends meet in the middle of the book, resulting in a single novel", writes E. Aranicis in his review entitled "Time Hunters" (Elefterotipia, 13 April; Elefteria, 24 April).

"On 13 April, before a projection of the film Byzantine Blue, the Tesla Award was presented to Serbian writer Milorad Pavic and, posthumously, to Greek actress Melina Mercury, as had been decided in 1993", (Niki, 14 April, "Two Receive Tesla Award").

"To me and my entire generation Melina Mercury was film beauty personified", said Mr Pavic while receiving his Award. He spoke of Melina Mercury's work with Belgrade theatre Atelje 212, wrote Mesimvrini on 14 April; Ta Nea on 14 April ("A hymn to Melina"); Ethnos, 14 April ("Tribute to Melina"); Avriani, 14 April ("Serbia Won't Forget Melina"); Katimerini, 14 April.

On 14 April, at noon, the writer autographed two hours his books at book shop Estia . Later in the evening he gave a lecture entitled "The Byzantine Myth and its Influence on European Culture – The New Berlin Wall "at Pandio University. Newspapers and magazines published the lecture in parts entitled "We,The Byzantine, Orthodox Culture", etc.

Nearly one hundred news papers published articles concerning Pavic's stay in Greece.