O Espaço Branco

by Zoran Živković

Ivana desapareceu...

Com o seu desaparecimento começa uma aventura fantástica para o Professor Zoran Živković, autor e professor de escrita criativa. Com a ajuda da Inspectora Sanja Mrvaljević da polícia de Belgrado, da contra-espionagem militar, da Agência Nacional de Segurança e, por fim, da Interpol, a busca por Ivana transforma-se num pesadelo cómico de proporções imprevistas. Porquê e como é que uma série de vídeos misteriosos, nos quais Ivana desempenha o papel principal, chegam à caixa de entrada do Professor Živković, e por que é que os seus cenários são ao mesmo tempo estranhamente familiares e desconhecidos? Como é que ele vai escapar à teia de suspeitas que se tece implacavelmente sobre ele, e será que ele e Ivana alguma vez se vão reencontrar?

Mais uma vez, e desta vez no sentido definitivo, Živković explora os truques e mistérios do processo criativo, num livro que é cativante, hilariante, tocante e mais revelador do que qualquer outro que o autor tenha escrito.

Genres: Fiction

306 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2023

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]

He's back!

From 1993 to 2016, Zoran Živković wrote twenty-two novels, roughly one novel a year. Years have elapsed since his last novel, The Image Interpreter, and many thought that was it - no more novels forthcoming from the Serbian man of letters.

But here we are today and Zoran Živković, age seventy-three, has given us a new novel, number twenty-three - The White Room.

In many ways, The White Room is special. One prime reason: the novel's protagonist and first-person narrator is none other than Zoran Živković himself. And on the first pages of The White Room, crisis is at hand. After eating supper alone (so strange, Ivana should have been home by now) and an hour completely absorbed in reading Laurent Binet's The Seventh Function of Language, Zoran Živković sits in his fifth floor Belgrade apartment off Mihajlo Pupin Boulevard and realizes (gulp) Ivana, the lady he's been living with these past two years, is missing.

What in the world happened to Ivana? Zoran reflects: Ivana left the apartment after giving him a quick kiss, smile and wave goodbye at about 5:30. Drat! In his crush to prepare for his evening creative writing class he didn't take the time to ask Ivana where she was going. Ivana, in turn, knew he was pressed for time and simply left without a word. And now there he is, nearly 11:00 at night with no phone call, text message or email from Ivana and he's ready to hit the panic button.

What to do? Of course, there's one and only one sensible thing to do - call the police. Zoran calls and is put on the line with a Senior Inspector Sanja Mrvaljević. The inspector asks a list of specific questions, a bit too many for Zoran's liking (it's no time to be asking him about a new novel!), and Inspector Mrvaljević tells him she'll call as soon as she has news.

Zoran frames his story thusly. And what makes this novel truly remarkable is his distinctive authorial voice, a combination Roald Dahl charming and Jorge Luis Borges fabulist, all within the tradition of Middle-European Gogol/Bulgakov/Kafka fantastica.

Fans of the author are in for a series of pleasant surprises - a number of familiar themes are given a further spin, a new Escher loop, an added twist on what it means to write metaphysical fantasy. There's way too many curves, swerves, wonders and surprises for me to divulge anything more about arc of plot, thus I'll take an immediate shift to note a batch of motifs and happenings -

LITERARY LINK
In Compendium of the Dead, second book of Zoran's The Papyrus Trilogy, Inspector Dejan Lukić exchanges reflections with a young lady in the police lab on José Saramago’s Death with Interruptions. Saramago's classic revolves around death as both a physical fact and a deeply rooted social and cultural phenomenon, themes that tie into evolving events in Compendium of the Dead.

Recall Zoran is reading Laurent Binet's The Seventh Function of Language, a novel that's a whodunnit where there's a fluid crossover between characters in a novel and real life people. Likewise, Binet's work ties in with unfolding happenings here. We're well to keep this French novel in mind when reading The White Room. If you haven’t actually read The Seventh Function of Language, then simply familiarizing yourself with the novel's basic facts will be enough.

INTERNET INDIGESTION
As if Olympic sprinters hearing the starting gun, there's off: Zoran and Inspector Mrvaljević begin a furious flurry of cell phone and email exchanges. Oh, yes, Zoran's cell phone keeps ringing and he keeps receiving links to videos Ivana sends one after the other. But, but, but...right from the start, a decided oddness creeps in.

The first piece of oddness: Ivana sends him a link to a video and Zoran watches in stunned disbelief at Ivana in the jungle. “She had a large taupe purse in her left hand while wielding a black umbrella in her right, as if clearing a path through the jungle with a machete.” The video clip ends with the kicker: “Finally arriving, she stopped, turned back and looked at the camera positioned high above her, as if she somehow knew that it was right there. For several moments she just smiled, then waved at me with the umbrella handle. Then she pressed on.”

How is this possible? And Ivana is dressed the same way as she was when she left the apartment! Predictably, Inspector Mrvaljević bombards Zoran with a list of questions. The video clips from Ivana continue and the strangeness becomes progressively stranger.

All this makes for lively reading but poor Zoran, he's forced to deal with all the bizarre madness as a man of seventy-three. He forever attempts to calm himself down. 'I was aware that I dare not fall into the trap spoken of in the Chinese proverb: 'If you’re expecting a horseman, you have to be very careful not to mistake your heartbeat for the beat of a horse’s hoofs.'"

HUMOR THROUGHOUT
During one of his initial conversations with Inspector Mrvaljević, Zoran suggests the possibility of kidnap and blackmail. The good Inspector retorts, "If that were so, the blackmailers would already have called. Besides, Professor Živković, the rich are kidnapped. Don’t get me wrong, but those would be some really naïve kidnappers if they hoped to get any sort of ransom from a Serbian writer.”

Ah, a line worthy of Mikhail Bulgakov or Nikolai Gogal, two of Zoran's favorite writers, writers he learned a great deal from in his writing of Middle-European fantastica fiction.

PREPOSTEROUS!
As impossible as it might seem, a second Ivana pops up. Does Ivana have a doppelgänger? And this is only the beginning as the swirl of impossibilities forever increases. My goodness, it's as if Zoran and the entire Serbian police force have been swept up in one of those Escher illustrations.

And speaking of doppelgängers, when Zoran takes a walk outside in the freezing cold, there's these curious lines: “I nodded a greeting to my neighbor who was returning from a walk with his excessively obese Belgian shepherd, which was dragging him by the leash. He smiled at me as if apologizing for the dog.” Hmm...did Zoran (author of The White Room) include a cameo appearance of himself in his own novel? If so, that would be a truly unique Escher loop!

NOVEL REDUX
What's frazzled Zoran to think when he learns the police have hidden cameras covering all of Belgrade – and even place hidden cameras in his very own apartment? Echoes of Hidden Camera. Also, echoes of The Papayrus Trilogy when the National Security Agency swings into action. Part of the delight in reading The White Room will be glimpsing snatches of Zoran's oeuvre.

HEARTFELT
Zoran writes: “With its specific humor of the paranoid, Hidden Camera inaugurated another pivotal motif: the idea of art and love as our ultimate line of defense against mortality. Eros and Thanatos perform an intricate dance in this novel. Without humor, its choreography would be too macabre, not, as seemed to me far more proper, a delicate ballet."

With The White Room, not only do we have the dance of Eros and Thanatos but there's also a very personal merging of heart and mind, of inspiration and the creative process, a moving portrait of an author's vision of his own life and writing.


Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948

[Álvaro Curia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma coincidência incrível: precisava deste livro e não sabia o quanto. Li sem parar durante dois dias. Não conseguia pousar o livro antes de saber o que acontecera a Ivana. Mas o que mais gostei foram os apontamentos sobre o trabalho do escritor e o processo criativo.
Editado em Portugal, em português, pela Narrativa.

[Cat .classics · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Patriciafoltz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I give this more than 5 stars? I love this authors work and this one was amazing.

[Analuabc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alucinante do início ao fim. Impossível parar de ler.

[Jen Klaas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Not to sound like a jerk, but I’m certain this is immensely more understood and appreciated by those readers who have written a novel (like me :)). I had no idea what the ending would be until I did, and … well I don’t really know how to explain it. Quite the inspiration for me to keep writing! (And reading Zivkovic)

[Leo W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delighted to have stumbled on this author!

[Raquel Oliveira · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 na verdade...

[Crna Ovca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kao i uvijek maestralno djelo našeg pisca. Šteta što mu je ovo i posljednja knjiga.