In Search of the Grail

by Svetislav Basara, Randall A. Major (Translator)

In Search of the Grail continues Svetislav Basara s Cyclist Conspiracy, a fantastical exploration of civilizational decline told through an array of strange and esoteric documents. Readers are introduced to a secret history of the twentieth century, shown that behind the well-known wars and political revolutions of the period numerous secret organizations vied for supremacy through the control of books, knowledge, and dreams. With appearances by Sigmund Freud, Salvador Dali, the Marquis de Sade, Karl Marx, and Josef Stalin, among many others, Basara s novel presents a singularly playful, imaginative portrait of modernity and of the human condition.

Genres: Novels, Serbian Literature

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Svetislav Basara (Serbian cyrillic: Светислав Басара) is a Serbian writer and columnist.
He is the author of more than forty literary works, including novels, story collections, and essays. For his novel Fuss about Cyclists (Fama o biciklistima) David Albahari said: "After the appearance of The Fuss about Cyclists, one can safely say, the Serbian prose has never been the same, just like Basara has never been the same author, just like I have never been the same reader again."

Basara received the NIN Prize, a prestigious Serbian literary award for the best novel, twice. In 2006 for 'Uspon i pad Parkinsonove bolesti' (The Rise and the Fall of Parkinson's Disease). and in 2020 for the novel Kontraendorfin (Counter-endorphin).

He was the ambassador of FR Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in Cyprus from 2001 to 2005.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is great fun. it's basically a series of increasingly insane found documents all of which relate in some way to a history spanning conspiracy by the 'Librarians' to falsify the world, move it away from God's light and transform it into fiction. there are references to all your favourite occult traditions, periods of history and some cameo appearances by authors like umberto eco and borges. basara himself also appears as a character in the book. there's a lot of really cute details like for example we learn that the byzantine empire raised itself into the heavens and that columbus, marx and freud were golems. highly recommended for readers of pavic, eco, borges, etc.

"Major T. P. Wood:
What was behind the sudden change in the decision-making of Adolph Hitler?
Klosowsky:
There’s no longer any doubt. Judging from the interest in all things related to my unit, Hitler had the ambition of totally controlling all of reality, and not just the realness of the physical world. He decided to do so after he read, in the reports of the intelligence units of the Traumeinsatz, that Stalin was controlling the dreams and subconscious of his own collaborators and subordinates, and that he was being shown the future by the Evangelical Bicyclists.
Major T. P. Wood:
We didn’t know that Stalin was a psychotherapist.
Klosowsky:
He certainly wasn’t! But that would be the reason for your failure. The decline of Western civilization. Nobody got rid of Stalin out of a whim or because of paranoia, as the hacks were quickly to begin claiming. No. All of those who disappeared in the purges had, in one way or another, the intention of overthrowing Joseph Vissarionovich. It was their misfortune that they did not know of Stalin’s secret ability. Hitler had a much better ear for such things than your generals-pragmatists. He started with the routine supervision of the dreams and subconscious minds of his generals, the party elite, scientists, and prominent citizens. How do you think he avoided all of those assassination attempts?
Lieutenant Smith:
Did Hitler stop there?
Klosowsky:
No. He ordered the attempt to establish control over the world of the dead. In one underground laboratory somewhere in the Norwegian mountains, the party necromancers worked day and night on evoking the dead warriors of German mythology, on conjuring up the spirit of von Clausewitz and attempting to manipulate it."

"Subject: Beginning of the Annihilation of the Universe. Date. Causes. Consequences.
Answer: Year: 1347. Cause: the number of non-believers which, on February 24 of that year, surpassed the number of the religious. Consequences: big epidemic of the Bubonic plague. Reason for the epidemic: attempt at correction through penance and reaching balance.
Attempt at correction unsuccessful. God completely withdraws from history.
Further consequences: humanism and the Renaissance, rationalism, the French Revolution.
Literature: older destroyed; from the seventeenth century forward, ninety percent falsified, practically useless. Most recent, injected into the public with the aid of mystification: the story of Rosenkreutz’s metaphysical projection, collection PHENOMENA, author: S. Basara, Vesti, Užice, 1989."

"In order to discover a world which did not exist, a fictional explorer was necessary. It’s well-known that Columbus, like those who later continued his work, Marx and Freud, was a Golem, a masterpiece of the Spanish Cabalists who were for centuries perfecting the skill of committing the most horrible of all sins: the creation of a being. However, nothing certain can be learned about that because the documents and protocols are kept in Hell."

"It is difficult to imagine, much less comprehend, the terrible breadth of the falsifications. Once they eliminated all the manuscripts that connected the Iron Age with the traditions of the bronze, silver, and golden ones, they had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to. The world no longer had any sort of history other than the one the Librarians crafted. Through patient effort, with the aid of many tricks and a handful of corrupt astronomers, they managed to get people to accept the heliocentric system; they removed the Earth from the center of the universe and put it just out there somewhere, and this produced a sense of disorientation among the masses. Believing that they were far away enough from God, they began to reshape the land and seas in accordance with their sinister intentions. They made some countries larger, some smaller, made up new ones. Just like that. Ordinary, everyday magic. They would draw a map of a country giving it the shape they wanted, and soon thereafter the territory itself would adapt to the assigned form. It is not as mysterious as it seems at first blush; matter is formless, inert, and it only takes on the forms given to it by human observation. Only recently was this deception by the Librarians unraveled."

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second novel in Basara’s ‘Cyclist Conspiracy’ series, preceded by that titular title, is another array of scholarly found documents, presented in a seemingly erratic manner, each exceedingly erudite and historically playful. The straight-faced nature of the pastiche leads to the materials becoming too dry and scholarly to consistently amuse.

[Margarita Nikolajevna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,75/5
Zasitih se postmodernizma bome

[Rowan Tepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most brilliant metafictional work, one so insistently meta- that it threatens to, or literally becomes a true meta meta-fictional-metaphysical copy of what we naively refer to as reality. The Cyclist Conspiracy was a work of utter brilliance - or madness, I cannot rightly say - that had i known it was the first of a trilogy, I would have gone mad with anticipation, rather than stumble upon it by happenstance on the day it arrived at the Strand bookstore, a day I knew there was a book calling for me, and that my dear friend Aubrey purchased for me.

And now, I am faced with a truly and damnedly absurd decision: to teach myself to passably read Serbian, or go mad with anticipation of this trilogy's final descent down and downward still into the rabbit holes of its consummation.

5 stars are 5 too few. Fetch me a ROG bicycle, and off we go.