Impossible Stories I by Zoran Zivkovic
Impossible Stories I is a collection of several of the author's finest works, including Time Gifts, Impossible Encounters, Seven Touches of Music, The Library (winner of the World Fantasy Award), and Steps through the Mist. The perfect introduction to the incredible world of Zoran Zivkovic.
Award-Winning Fantasy Fiction
This hardcover anthology brings together five distinctive narratives that showcase Zivkovic's unique approach to metaphysical storytelling. The collection includes The Library, recognized with the prestigious World Fantasy Award, alongside four other carefully crafted tales that explore the boundaries between reality and the impossible.
What Readers and Critics Say
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Impossible Stories might be approached as if one were inspecting a handsome piece of furniture, a cabinet in which each of any number of regularly sized and shaped drawers is built precisely to contain and to somehow exemplify its own metaphysical freight or uncanny puzzle, and it is in the rhythm and variety of the whole, too, that the nature of Zivkovic's craft can be apprehended and enjoyed.
--Tony White, Wasafiri
- ...even though they own and use computers, Zivkovic's characters seem decidedly nineteenth century. They are as intelligent and as neurotic as Poe's personae, and admirers of that master of the outre-or of Borges, Gogol, Capek, and Lem-will be enthralled by them.
--Ray Olson, Booklist
- ...well worth reading for the ingenuity of Zivkovic's stories. He is extraordinarily clever and has a particular talent for devising awkward moral dilemmas for his characters. His writing is also ... quite unlike that of anyone else.
--Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City
Stories Included in This Collection
Each story in Impossible Stories I presents its own metaphysical puzzle and moral complexity. Time Gifts explores temporal paradoxes, while Impossible Encounters examines the nature of chance meetings. Seven Touches of Music weaves sound and narrative together, and Steps through the Mist ventures into liminal spaces between worlds.
For Fans of Literary Fantasy
Readers who appreciate the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Edgar Allan Poe, Stanislaw Lem, and Karel Capek will find familiar territory in Zivkovic's intelligent, neurotic characters and uncanny narratives. The author's nineteenth-century sensibility combined with contemporary settings creates a distinctive reading experience that stands apart from conventional fantasy fiction.
This hardcover edition provides an accessible entry point into Zivkovic's body of work, demonstrating the ingenuity and moral complexity that defines his approach to speculative fiction.
