The Fourth Circle - Zoran Živković’s first novel published in 1993 when he was age forty-five. The Serbian author related in an interview that in many ways writing fiction was a completely new experience - although literature was always an essential part of his life stretching back to his boyhood and years of work as editor, publisher and translator of literature, the idea of writing fiction never occurred to him. And once he began writing fiction he was astonished and amazed at the lack of rational control over the process; rather, when writing fiction, the sentences kept flowing as if out of nowhere, as if he was merely receiving dictation from the subconscious, non-rational areas of his psyche.
After The Fourth Circle, Zoran Živković went on to write twenty-one more novels over the course of the next twenty-five years, delightful, charming, provocative novels well worth any reader's time. I speak from experience since I've read and reviewed each and every one. It just so happens my final Zoran Živković review is of his first novel.
And what a novel! Without further ado, here are my ten top reasons to put The Fourth Circle on your reading list:
1. There are famous characters from the world of science - Archimedes, Stephen Hawking, Nikola Tesla, among others.
2. Do you like multiple, intertwining plots? If so, you're in luck since the novel features nearly a dozen, all kept under control by the author’s master storytelling.
3. You will meet a Buddhist computer genius who creates a program that can outpace any you might have come across in other tales of science fiction (sorry, HAL - you've been left in the solar dust).
4. Do you enjoy a novel that can be interpreted in ways that are part of the mystical traditions of Orthodox Christianity? Esoteric Buddhism? Gnostic Occultism? The Yogas of Yantra, Mantra and Tantra? With all its circle symbolism, The Fourth Circle is your book.
5. Travel to exotic locations like a South-East Asian jungle and take your chances in solving the riddles of the universe with such schemes as probability and game theory.
6. Glimpse unique instances of artistic expression like the medieval painter who causes a scandal among religious leaders by covering their church ceiling with depictions of the torments and horrors of hell rather than pleasing scenes of heaven.
7. In all the many works of fiction you may have read, have you ever come across a race of spherical beings with hyperosmia? You will here!
8. Guess who are brought in on the case in the closing chapters to solve outstanding cosmological, metaphysical and epistemological conundrums and quandaries? Why, none other than Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Conan Doyle himself.
9. The translation by Mary Popović renders the author's Serbian into a fluid, accessible English.
10. Perhaps the best reason of all - you surely will be excited to read the author's other novels. Here's a link to a page where you can find all of my Zoran Živković reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Serbian author Zoran Živkovic, born 1948
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