Biography Essay

Milorad Pavic is a poet, a writer of fiction, a professor at the University of Belgrade and Novi Sad, and an historian of Serbian literature from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. His work as a fiction writer went almost unnoticed for more than three decades until he earned worldwide popularity with the publication and subsequent translation into many languages of Hazarski recnik (1984; translated as Dictionary of the Khazars, 1988). This book, subtitled "A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words," represents a daring literary experiment that examines the history of the lost Khazar tribe from the diverging perspectives of Christian, Moslem, and Jewish historiography. His next novel, Predeo slikan cajem (1988, translated as Landscape Painted with Tea, 1990), is a formal experiment as well, in which Pavic attempts to construct a book that can be read like a crossword puzzle, both "across" and "down." These two innovative books, combined with Pavic's...