Steps Through the Mist

by Zoran Živković, Alice Copple-Tošić (Translator)

Five women in various stages of life―all connected by a mysterious, obscuring mist―face the deterministic trap of fate in this mosaic novel. A freshman at a girl’s boarding school gains the strange ability to share other people’s dreams, whereas a young woman in a straitjacket desperately tries to select a very particular future from among countless possibilities. A middle-aged skier refuses to be a puppet on a string, while a mature fortune-teller experiences a faltering faith in her trade, and when an elderly woman’s precious alarm clock suddenly breaks, she suffers a vivid and troubling encounter with her past. An enticing mix of the ordinary with the surreal and the mundane with the sublime, these tales quietly twist trusted concepts.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Serbian Literature, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Literature, Horror

125 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973 he graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he received his master's degree in 1979 and his doctorate in 1982 from the same school. He lives in Belgrade, Serbia, with his wife Mia, who is French, and their twin sons Uroš and Andreja. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology. He's received plenty of awards, one of them being the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella (The Library, 2003).

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Steps Through the Mist - Serbian author Zoran Živković’s 80-page “mosaic novel” features a different woman in each of its five tales, beginning with a student at a boarding school and concluding with a disturbing event impacting the life of an elderly woman. And that’s “mosaic novel” in the sense the stories share common themes, in this specific instance, themes of freedom versus determinism, clarity of perception versus the mist of mystery. Also, by my reading, these five pieces share a prime focus for author Zoran Živković: the intersecting of two realities, the reality of the story with the reality of the storyteller. To observe these themes in action, let’s turn to each tale:

1. Disorder in the Head
We are in the classroom at a girl’s boarding school and watch as twenty-six freshman obediently stand at attention when their teacher, Miss Emily, enters. All the girls are wearing identical navy-blue dresses covering their youthful bodies from the neck to well below their knees and have their hair pulled back in braids. Only when Miss Emily walks over and finally sits down at her desk are the girls permitted to, in turn, take their seats.

As an effective method to contain and eventually snuff out any trace of a new student’s disorderliness, Miss Emily asked the girls to write down their dreams from the previous night. From many years of experience, Miss Emily knows a number of her sixteen-year-old freshman will write about made-up dreams as an attempt to outsmart or deceive her, maybe even try to make fun of her. They must be given a lesson in public humiliation for their own good.

True to form, today there are three such girls, Alexandra, Theodora and Clara. As she has always done, Miss Emily has the three girls stand and castigates them one by one for lying. Miss Emily then asks what they have to say for themselves. An uneasy silence pervades the room. Miss Emily takes satisfaction in the girls' upset and tears. And then the unexpected happens: a barely audible voice, “They didn’t lie.”

What! Such insolence! Miss Emily asks the name of the girl who dared speak. “Miss Irena,” she answers. Miss Emily recalls something and pulls out from her stack of papers a blank sheet from the bottom. Miss Emily holds up the sheet that’s blank other than the student’s name at the bottom. “Ah, you are the one. Very nice. And this was your dream?” Irena replies, “Yes.”

A lively exchange ensues wherein Irena informs Miss Emily the paper is blank because she dreamed of mist and out of the mist she entered other people’s dreams, including the dreams of Alexandra, Theodora and Clara. Therefore, Irena continues, she knows all three of her classmates reported their actual, true dreams.

Taken aback momentarily, Miss Emily collects herself and accuses Irena of lying and colluding with those other three lairs. Again, the unexpected: Irena informs Miss Emily she has also entered her dream and goes on to recount Miss Emily's dream in detail. Flabbergasted but still maintaining her wits, Miss Emily orders Irena to the principal's office.

When Irena reaches the door, we are in for another instance of the unexpected, this time propelling the story into further realms of the fabulous - Irena cautions Miss Emily and her classmates that when she leaves, everyone in the classroom will vanish in a cloud of mist.

Miss Emily responds: "We had no idea that someone so important was with us." To which Irena answers: "I'm not at all important. Quite the contrary. I am very secondary. This is not my dream. I am only a guest in it, as usual. But when I leave it, the dream will cease to be. All of this will disappear."

Let's pause here and make a shift to Zoran Živković's theme of the interplay of author and story. When Irena admits she's not at all important, only secondary, only a guest in the dream, doesn't this sound as if she recognizes herself as a character within a story, that her entire world is a fictional dream created by an author?

And how about the classroom vanishing into mist? Isn't that an accurate image of what happens when a writer finishes a story? In other words, the characters are vitally alive in the imagination of an author during the actual writing process but when the last sentence is completed and the writer moves on to other things, the characters and everything else in the story fade into mist.

Likewise, readers bring characters to life while reading but what fate awaits those characters once the story is over and one closes the book? If you are like me, the characters dissolve into mist and remain as mist until they are retrieved by memory.

2. Hole in the Wall
We join Dr. Alexander as she enters a padded cell where, following a suicide attempt, twenty-six-year-old Katarina sits in a straitjacket leaning against the back wall. As is her usual practice, Dr. Alexander also takes a seat as encouragement for a patient to feel more relaxed and open up. Fortunately, Katarina has no problem talking about her suicide attempt, in her own mind, an attempt that was a logical consequence of her head injury in an auto accident.

Logical consequence? Oh, yes, as Katerina explains, following her accident, she cannot only see into the future but she can also choose which one of the possible futures will manifest both for herself and for everyone else – hardly a gift; more of an unendurable burden. Dr. Alexander knows from experience she must proceed with caution as she engages Katerina in a discussion touching on freedom, chance and determinism. You will have to read for yourself to see how this provocative tale plays out, but let’s again switch to the theme of author and story.

At one point Katerina speak of her vision of the future: “It starts to shine with an internal glow, turning transparent and expanding at the same time, pushing the others into the background. In the end it fills up the beam’s whole space. That’s all there is, that one future that will become real. It stands before you crystal clear. Everything can be seen in that one strand that has detached itself and expanded. Everything that will happen.”

Ha! Irony of ironies. This sounds precisely the way many fiction writers proceed with their stories, especially if those writers are like Zoran Živković who told an interviewer, “When I come to my desk to begin a new story or a new novel, I know very little about it, at least on a conscious level. It is in my subconscious that the work is already fully formed, waiting to be transferred to my monitor via my keyboard.”

3. Geese in the Mist
Our attractive thirty-something narrator is having one of those days – the hot water in her ski resort hotel bathroom was turned off, a kid squirted her with ketchup at breakfast, and then, when she was nearly all bundled up in her ski wear, she tore a nail.

Can things get any worse? Unfortunately, they can – turns out, the person sitting next to her on the two-seater ski lift isn’t another skier but some sixty-year-old gent wearing a dress hat, bow tie and fancy shoes. And then, halfway up the slope, the energy cuts out. Ahh!

As if reading her thoughts, Mister Formality tells her the energy will be restored in exactly seven and a half minutes. Oh, you must be clairvoyant. He tells her he is not at all clairvoyant. She presses him on his seeming omniscience and the gentleman begins to explain the dynamics of life in terms of the metaphysics of cause and effect. Oh, no! It most definitely is one of those days.

More than you can guess, madam. Reading between the lines, I sense this formally attired, dapper gentleman might just be author Zoran Živković inserting himself into his story so he can converse with his main character. Certainly, the most humorous tale in Steps Through the Mist.

4. Line on the Palm
A seasoned clairvoyant's current client is not the usual middle-aged man or woman looking to her for a guarantee of living to a ripe old age but a young man who turns out to be a philosopher in possession of a few unpleasant surprises - not the least of which is a loaded pistol. The tension between freedom and determinism is about to take a serious turn.

5. Alarm Clock on the Night Table
Elderly Miss Margarita pops awake and knows for certain something is terribly wrong. Can an alarm clock's malfunction have alarming (no pun intended) results? Yes it can. A tale with too much mystery for me to say anything further.

When asked by an interviewer to name authors who have had an influence on his writing, as part of his reply, Zoran Živković stated he has great respect for the allusive webbing of Kazuo Ishiguro’s prose. I’m happy to report there is a measure of Ishiguro-style allusive webbing in Steps Through the Mist, adding a special piquancy. I encourage you to take the needed steps to read this short novel for yourself.

Steps Through the Mist is available as a stand-alone novel and also 1 of 5 short novels in Impossible Stories 1 published by Cadmus Press


Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five interlocking short stories that walk through the eternal debate: is life predetermined or is it left up to chance? Can possibly leave you feeling a tad creeped out. Don't read before you go to sleep.

for a more thorough review

[Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

what zivkovic calls a mosaic novel, told in 5 parts from 5 stories, investigates the unreality of reality, via a metaphor of mist descending so that the character is totally enveloped and must rely on their inner dialog to figure out their fate (death, of course). i like zivkovic for has style of very matter-of-fact telling, but very surreal circumstances and that usually end in miserable and mostly violent death. Author continually questions fate, choices, freewill, and chance, usually to the detriment of his characters. that said, i liked his novel "hidden camera" better because it does all of the above in great detail and with just one character, instead of 5. it is a dalkey . he also has nice blog and pics, and vids here http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

his other usa publisher is AIO, who seem kind of interesting too
http://www.aiopublishing.com/

[Steve Gutin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time reading Zivkovic. The hype made it sound like I was gonna love him, just the kind of thing I like, and they say he's fantastic. Considering how high my hopes were, the stories were very good, two of them great. I give it five stars because I may have expected too much. He gets compared repeatedly to Borges and Calvino; I felt that the stories were more like really good Twilight Zones. Which is great! I'll definitely read more of him.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This new-to-me author won the World Fantasy Award in 2003 for his “mosaic novel” The Library, which unfortunately my library didn’t have. Steps Through the Mist, which was published in 2003 and published in English translation in 2007, is also billed as a mosaic novel, which I’m just taking to mean basically a set of interconnected short stories. At least for this book, the stories were “interconnected” in that they shared common themes, rather than having any overlap between the characters or apparent setting.⁣
⁣
The book’s five stories follow five women who face the swirling mists of fate in unusual circumstances. A real mixed bag of a collection, these stories were intriguing and atmospheric but often left me wanting, and I was especially disappointed by how much I hated the last one. It’s always unfortunate to end on a low note, and that quite soured the experience of the book for me overall. I’d love to discuss this collection if anyone out there has read it too, maybe scrape together some more coherent thoughts on what Živković was attempting to accomplish here, since the collection ultimately flashed too briefly before my eyes to make any semblance of a profound impact.⁣

Cw for suicide, forced institutionalization.⁣

[Nic · Rating 3 out of 5]

A handful of decent short stories. 3.5 stars

[Branko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sjajne kratke priče koje zajedno čine jednu celinu.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminiscent of the best of Frederic Brown, Anthony Boucher, and Jonathan Carroll, Serbian writer Zoran Zivkovic’s latest book Steps Through the Mists (Atelier Polaris, 2003) traverses the unpredictable worlds of Fate. Five women of various ages, occupations, and mental states encounter their unique futures: a school girl journeys in others’ dreams; a woman in a straightjacket not only sees the future, but determines it as well; a middle-aged skier encounters a mysterious being who attempts to control her; a fraudulent fortune-teller who mistrusts her own abilities; and an old lady whose precious alarm clock breaks. Through five short stories, Zivkovic weaves these disparate elements into a masterpiece that can’t be laid down.

Steps Through the Mist is littered with scenes that question what is real and what is not. The endings are almost all shockers, but of the good kind. The surprise that puts everything into context or of the type that you hope the writer would go through with if they had the balls or the vision. Zivkovic has both in spades. And the talent. His writing is deceptively simple and beautifully elegant all at the same time. His translator Alice Copple-Tosic is to be congratulated. A poor translation often destroys an otherwise good book. Zivkovic has used Copple-Tosic on most of his English translated works with good reason, as evident with Steps Through the Mist which reads like it was originally written in English. The prose is flawless.

Zivkovic brings us into the minds of the women. We become familiar with each one’s fears, hopes, and neuroses. As each made her way through the mists to the future, I empathized with her plight. Their confusion, trepidation, and concerns became my own.

My complaints about this book are mainly cosmetic and most of them rise out of my experience as a bookseller and publisher. Though nicely packaged with good cover stock and quality paper, there is nothing on the outside of the book to tell you about it. On the cover is an attractive painting with the author and title. The back cover is black with a small moon and the publisher’s logo. If this book hadn’t been sent to me and if I weren’t already familiar with Zoran Zivkovic, I would have never picked this up, never mind read it. Sadly, these problems (along with the current lack of distribution) will most likely prevent Steps Through the Mist from getting the audience it deserves.

With this book, Zoran Zivkovic demonstrates why he is one of the great, although unheralded, masters of the contemporary fantasy. Steps Through the Mist is a must have for people who like their fiction a little surreal and a lot off center.

(This review originally appeared on RevolutionSF.)
Link: [http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.h...]

[Eric Stutzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading this book I knew nothing about either the author or of the work itself. In fact, the only reason I picked this up was because I happened to be at an event at my local library and, being early as usual, decided to browse the shelves. In doing so, this particular book caught my eye due largely to the fact that it was much smaller than the rest of the books near it, as well as it's lovely cover with black and silver adornments. I decided to take it home and read it because why not. I was genuinely surprised by how good it was. When I finished the short 'mosaic novel' I looked up the author because I was shocked I had never heard of this talented writer before. The author, one Zoran Živković of Serbia has earned my respect in spades. This book, while short and unassuming is unlike any I've ever encountered before or since. In fact, this is the sort of book which can be called a 'diamond in the rough.' There are few like it, which only helps establish it as one of the most unique and excellent books I've read in quite some time. This is a book that, should I ever get the chance, would and will highly recommend to anyone who is looking for a book experience that is off the beaten path. An incredible read, and if you wish to learn more Glenn Russell has a far more detailed review already published and I would recommend checking it out as well!

[Jess Tapley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really was drawn in by this book, because it was so mysterious! I had no idea what to expect. There was no description, just a black book with an interesting title. I loved the writing style; the book contained a few short stories which all had a sense of chilling finality to them, all feeling complete as they were read on their own, yet were connected to a central theme, which gave the stories some fluency as they shifted. The writing is eerie, but in a wonderful and subtle way.

The most interesting story was the one about the woman who was in the psychiatric ward who had the ability to choose the future and didn't want the responsibility of choosing the best possible future. Very interesting idea presented there, that the future outcomes are only fair if directed by chance, no matter how chaotic, rather than conscious choice, no matter how planned and well intentioned. Because even when choosing to decrease suffering, it would still require choosing which few people would suffer for the majority.

I thought the ideas in the stories were presented with simplicity that was a bit lacking in complexity (I didn't mind that so much, but it just didn't take me long to read at all), but overall, I found the writing eloquent.

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

So bizarre.

Can a girl visit the dreams of others? What is a dream and what is reality? Should someone be allowed to dictate the future? Can you stop time? What if you're dead and can't tell? Can you choose when it's time to die?

This book creeped me out. There's no logical reason as to why it freaked me out as much as it did. There are five simple stories about five different women. Through every story flows the ethereal mist - disguising and distorting reality.

The women, themselves, were a little, shall we say, strange? Then they had these bizarre experiences that left the reader wondering what was true and what was imagined. I honestly can't explain why it was so disturbing, but it was. I couldn't read it at night.

I gave it two stars because I didn't love it. I don't love books that leave me feeling so strange. Also, I think the author was trying to make a point, but I couldn't really figure out what it was. If you like weird psychologically disturbing stories, then you should check this book out.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I needed a book from the bottom shelf for my libraries winter reading club and I chose this one at random based solely on it's cover. I didn't read what it was about, or who the author was, I barely even paid attention to the title until after I had finished reading it and I'm glad I did it this way.

The cover is black on black with silver writing and the texture of half is softer, almost leathery with a black lamppost overlaid on it. The edges of the book are printed in black and inside on each page is the authors signature in the spine so you see parts of it peeking out as you read.

The stories were fairly short with a common thread running through them, but each stood alone and had it's own meaning. They are evocative, disquieting without being disturbing and thought provoking without being obvious, each one was just a subtle little gem that challenges how you see things.

I am hoping this author has more works translated into English so I can read more by him.

[Yune · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Miss Alexandra dreamed that she was in an asylum for the mentally disturbed after a traffic accident in which she hurt her head. She had terrible visions that frightened her. A doctor came to visit and she told him about her visions, but he didn't believe them. Miss Theodora dreamed that she was skiing. An unusually dressed man sat next to her on the ski lift. He explained that he was not there by accident. He had come to see which path she would take to ski down the slope. For some reason this was very important. Miss Clara dreamed that she was a clairvoyant. A young man came to her parlor with a strange request. He wanted her to confirm that he only had a short time left to live."

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Complete Review has never let me down.

Zoran Zivkovic's Steps Through the Mist is a collection of inter-connected short stories (a mosaic novel, if you will) about five women, each with a unique relationship to their fate. There is an interesting investigation here into creation, knowledge and command; in each story, a woman may have all or none regarding her fate but her possession of any of them forms the crux of each story or 'tile'.

This was a fresh, exciting piece of writing and I'm glad that I came across it. I will read more by this author in the future. If you like philosophy with your fiction, this is for you.

[Sae-chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful little black book. Reason enough to own this book. Can be kept as a low maintenance pet.

The stories were told in simple manner, makes it easy for the reader to get drawn into the grey mist. There are many ways to navigate through the mist. Many times we stick to the way that has been familiar to us. Maybe it's time to try other ways....

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five stories in this book are quick to read and intensely unique. Initially each story seems to stand on its own but parts of each story blend themselves into the others and it really helps the novel feel complete.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unusual and enjoyable.

[David Wernsing · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn't understand this book. It might be great if you understand it.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zivkovic uses the motif of fate as a thread to weave together the stories of four diverse women. It's a weird little thing, but I enjoyed it; I can see how fans of Jean-Paul Sartre would too.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting little collection of short stories about women and fate, linked together by the introductory piece. Best read all in one sitting so the connections are not missed.

[Philip Tha- B. Toole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous stories..

[Aiden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book written by an author that has such talent, that it is rare to find one once in a million years! It will touch your heart and entertain your mind

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good short stories, but I felt like something was lost in the translation.

[Shanti]

good

[Pam Herrmann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Five short stories - strange book about women and mist. Probably a little too deep for me.