"Nothing about the death seemed violent, so there was no reason for an investigation. But the owner of the Papyrus Bookstore panicked. No one had yet lost their life in her store. She called the police as well as an ambulance."
The above are the first lines in Zoran Živković's The Last Book, by far the author's best-selling novel to date - 20,000 copies have sold in Italy alone, nothing short of a monumental achievement for a literary author whose sales are usually much more modest.
The novel's rousing success is understandable. Crime fiction, specifically a murder mystery featuring a detective, counts as among the most popular genres for readers of all ages and backgrounds. The novels by the likes of Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø and Jussi Adler-Olsen are routinely translated into dozens of languages and sell by the millions.
I can imagine fans of Mankell's Inspector Kurt Wallander or Nesbø's Inspector Harry Hole or Adler-Olsen's Inspector Carl Mørck reading that the Serbian author's The Last Book features an Inspector Dejan Lukić attempting to crack a series of mysterious murders taking place at a bookstore. Whoa! Start those presses rolling. And in addition to murders and a police inspector, The Last Book also includes references to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and a secret, mystical hooded sect meeting underground - double whoa! Not only start those presses rolling but keep them rolling.
And similar to Kurt Wallander, Harry Hole and Carl Mørck, the featured main character in an entire series of best-selling novels written by those three internationally acclaimed crime fiction authors, Inspector Dejan Lukić also appears in each volume of Zoran Živković's The Papyrus Trilogy. However, it must be acknowledged, the second and third volumes of the trilogy, The Grand Manuscript and The Compendium of the Dead, have not recorded sales equal to The Last Book.
You may ask: why is this? Well, as it turns out, for a very specific reason - Zoran Živković is not writing crime fiction of the Mankell or Nesbø type but is rather writing Central European fantastica of the Gogol or Bulgakov type. Added to this, The Last Book reminds me of the quirky metafiction found in John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse including such stories as Frame-Tale with instructions to cut and twist and tape the sentence "There once was a story that began" into a Möbius strip to form an unending story comprised of one unending sentence.
This being said, to discover how exactly Zoran Živković makes the transition from murder mystery, references to The Name of the Rose and members of a hooded, mystic sect to a tale of the metafictional fantastic, you will have to read for yourself. Thus, at this point, I will circle back in order to share a bit of color commentary on the first several chapters.
Vera Gavrilović is owner of the Papyrus Bookstore. Inspector Lukić enters into a romantic relationship with Vira that starts at the local tea shop and end up in Vera’s bed, a tender, endearing development that adds much sweetness to the tale. Also worth mentioning, unlike the typical hardboiled detectives in crime novels, not once does Inspector Lukić drink coffee or hard liquor, rather, under the guidance of Vera, the inspector sticks with mugs of fig tea, beetroot tea and lotus tea. Ah, the soothing effects of love.
And not only does our Inspector Lukić focus on his job as detective, he’s a great reader and lover of literature – in addition to The Name of the Rose, another classic comes up in conversation more than once: Crime and Punishment, written by none other than the master who had a profound influence on author Zoran Živković: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The tight connection between character and author is revealed more completely at the end.
Of course, central to a murder mystery is crime. What and who caused the sudden death of those unfortunate otherwise healthy frequenters to the Papyrus Bookstore? The doctors and all concerned are completely baffled. The victims died one at a time but there must be a connection. Terrorists and terrorism becomes a distinct possibility. Enter Commissioner Milenković from the National Security Agency. Another layer of intrigue is added to the tale - government surveillance becomes so all pervasive it even extends to continual surveillance of the police, including Inspector Lukić.
Fortunately, there is a clue, a common denominator for all the deaths: a book, or more precisely, the last book. A thorough investigation of each and every book in the Papyrus Bookstore must be conducted. At one point, Inspector Lukić examines the photos he’s taken of three hundred books on nine key shelves and collates them by various categories on his computer. But not long thereafter the good inspector discovers his computer has been hacked. The plot thickens.
Did I mention color commentary back there? So happens we have yet again another transition paralleling the shift from crime thriller to fantastic metafiction. It's when color blind Vera Gavrilović at the end of the tale is able to see colors for the very first time in her life. Now, is your curiosity piqued? I certainly hope so. I urge you to pick up a copy of The Last Book to see how it all fits together. I can assure you there will be a few stunning surprises. You might even be motivated to continue following the adventures of Inspector Lukić in Volume Two and Three of The Papyrus Trilogy.
Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948
"The man was shrinking rapidly before my very eyes. After his legs came his trunk. When his shoulders had disintegrated, the erosion suddenly stopped. The sight of a head and two arms not connected to it, with hands still holding the book, was more appalling than the preceding erosion. I wanted to cry out, but still did not have control of my voice." - Zoran Živković, The Last Book
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