By the author of the highly acclaimed literary bestseller Dictionary of the Khazars, Landscape Painted with Tea, Milorad Pavić’s novel, is a tale of mysterious quest that is part modern Odyssey and part crossword puzzle. It begins with the story of a brilliant but failed architect in Belgrade and his search for his father, an officer who vanished in Greece during World War II. The truth about his fate – some of it set in motion 2,000 years ago and some of it by the Nazis – is raveled in the history and secrets of Mount Athos, the most ancient of all monasteries, perched atop its inaccessible mountain on the Aegean.
* * *
“I wrote Landscape Painted with Tea employing a favorite and long-known manner of reading which, however, has not been used in literature – the crossword puzzle. The novel can be read down or across, inside it you can find a heroine that falls in love with the reader, and her fate differs depending on whether the reader is male and female.Reading and gender (Jasmina Mihajlović’s term) determines whether the book will have a happy ending, or end in tragedy.
Landscape Painted with Tea or novel for crossword puzzle lovers, actually a crossword-puzzle novel, can be read across (and in that case the emphasis is on the love story) or down (in that case the emphasis is on the characters of the novel). The heroine of the book falls in love with the reader.” Milorad Pavić
Translated from the Serbian by Kristina Pribićević – Zorić
* * *
Roman-ukrštene reči, kako je Pavić odredio svoj Predeo slikan čajem, metafora je ukrštanja raznih života, raznih životnih priča i sudbina. Promenivši sopstveno ime, Pavićev junak menja i svoj identitet i kao da prelazi iz jednog života u drugi, iz jednog romana u drugi. Predeli koje tokom svog života junak oslikava čajem, slika su njegove duše, istorija njegovog života,ali isto tako oni su veza sa samom istorijom, sa prošlošću i tradicijom iz koje potičemo. Priča o stvaralaštvu, o porivu ka graditeljstvu i slikarstvu, koji najpre ne može da se ispolji, a potom stvara čuda, jeste priča o čoveku, o sticanju samopouzdanja, o ljubavi.Bio je izabran za roman godine 1988. (nagrada „Meša Selimović“), a kao najčitanija knjiga dobio je nagradu Narodne biblioteke Srbije 1989. Uvećana sloboda izbora obeležava možda najupečatljiviji razvoj u onom što se naziva postmoderna književnost, trend koji će sigurno pomoći da izgradimo nikada dovršenu zgradu mogućnosti, koja se zove budućnost.