Zoran has gone missing.
The above is the opening sentence of The Black Room, the Serbian author's twenty-fifth novel, and it comes as something of a surprise. In the closing pages of Zoran's The White Room, published in 2022, his muse informs him that she is closing down the white room—that is, the aspect of his mind that has provided the literary inspiration for all of his novels.
Yet today, four years later, we have The Black Room, a delightful short novel that contains all the charm and storytelling magic of Zoran's previous fiction. How can this be? Actually, we're given a direct answer in the closing pages of The Black Room, an answer that expands the imagination and provides a creative spark for anyone engaged in the literary arts, whether as readers, writers, or both.
The Black Room propels the reader to keep turning the pages to discover what happens next and then what happens after that, beginning with its beguiling opening sentence. As we quickly discover, the narrator of this tale of Middle-European fantastica, in the tradition of Nikolai Gogol and Franz Kafka, is none other than Ivana, the woman who has shared Zoran's life for the past nine years.
Ivana is frazzled. She phoned Zoran repeatedly after her outing at the theater, but there was no answer. This is most unusual, since Zoran never goes out after his online creative writing class. Then, when she returns to their apartment and calls his name—no answer. Zoran is gone. What is particularly disturbing is that Zoran left without his cellphone. That never happens.
In desperation, Ivana calls one of Zoran's students to see if anything unusual occurred during the class. It turns out there was something. As the class was wrapping up, Zoran talking of Dostoevsky, he received a phone call. He took the call, rejoined the class, and ended the session by saying he would continue the discussion next time. But when Ivana checks Zoran's phone, there is no indication of such a call. Moreover, she discovers that Zoran, who is very sensitive to the cold, also left the apartment without his winter jacket.
Ivana realizes she has no alternative but to call the police. She explains the crisis to none other than Sanja Mrvaljević, the Senior Inspector whose namesake appeared in The White Room. At this point, events begin to bend in the strangest of ways.
As in all of Zoran Živković's fiction, the language of The Black Room is clear and accessible, reminding readers of Neil Gaiman and Roald Dahl. This is particularly appealing because the Serbian author's works also contain a distinctly philosophical dimension, bringing to mind Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges.
A Black Room philosophy highlight reel:
Missing Person – What does it mean to go missing? Does a work of Middle-European fantastica need to follow the laws of nature? Not necessarily. Think of Nikolai Gogol's beloved tale The Nose, where the civil servant Major Kovalyov wakes up one morning to discover his nose has left his face and is living a life of its own. Or the way Daniil Kharms completely erases a living, breathing human being piece by piece right before the reader's eyes in The Red-Haired Man.
So, later in the story, when Zoran vanishes from a windowless room in, of all places, the National Security Agency, should we be shocked? Again, not necessarily. We would be wise simply to continue reading to discover what happens next and how such a disappearance might prompt us to reflect on the nature of identity—and artistic creation.
Memory – When Zoran is found after first going missing, one thing remains missing: his memory of what happened between the time he ended his discussion of Dostoevsky with his students and the following morning. If only Zoran could remember what transpired during those lost hours, many riddles would be solved—most importantly, who placed the mysterious phantom call that sent him racing outside into the freezing cold without his winter coat.
A phantom call? Oh, yes. Somehow, the caller cannot be traced, even by the National Security Agency.
Readers familiar with Zoran's novel Amarcord will recognize the central role memory plays throughout his fiction. In that novel's ten short chapters, each character confronts his or her own identity and sense of self through the power of memory.
The Omnipresent Eye – As events move apace, Ivana thinks: “I was completely in the grip of a blind urge to flee somewhere, to hide from those already coming for me. I could swear I heard the pounding of their steps, running up the stairs to the fifth floor. Any moment they would break in to take me to some underground dungeon of the Agency, with chains on the walls and a table with straps beside which stood the most terrifying instruments of torture.”
Unlike Serbian authors Borislav Pekić and Danilo Kiš, Zoran is not primarily a writer of political fiction. However, in this novel and in his Papyrus Trilogy, he acknowledges how surveillance cameras, tapped phones, and hacked computers can be employed by those in power to maintain strict control.
New Novel – In addition to that phantom call, there is also a phantom icon that appears on Zoran's computer screen—New Novel. What are we to make of that? We're given hints throughout, such as Senior Inspector Sanja Mrvaljević telling Ivana that she has “the strange impression I was speaking lines from The White Room. The novel affected me so deeply . . .”
Herein lies the rub. Zoran writes fiction that can be likened to the art of M. C. Escher. Where does fact turn into fiction and fiction turn into fact? When does a character in one of his novels begin speaking and acting on another fictional level, as if moving along the surface of a Möbius strip?
The Black Room – Again, in The White Room, the muse lets Zoran know she is closing down that part of his mind from which she has long provided his literary inspiration. But what is poor Zoran to do if he is inspired to write another novel? Must he grind it out on his own? Without the muse, would a future novel turn out to be a colossal flop?
As noted above, the answers to these questions are revealed in the closing pages—and, in a very real sense, throughout this splendid novel itself.
Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948
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