The Papyrus Trilogy

A series of mysterious deaths in the Papyrus Bookstore brings literature-loving police inspector Dejan Luki to investigate. Together with the attractive owner, Vera Gavrilovi, they discover the elusive Last Book is responsible. Seemingly causeless deaths multiply, the National Security Agency, a secret apocalyptic sect, and others are drawn in, and the secrets of immortality, death, and reality itself are revealed in a masterful trilogy that demonstrates the magical and ultimately benevolent power of literature.

Includes The Last Book, The Grand Manuscript, and The Compendium of the Dead.

• Why isn't Zoran ivkovi better known in this country? He possesses an imaginative ingenuity and charm similar to that of, say, Paul Auster or Italo Calvino, with bits of Kafka, Borges and Beckett mixed in... the narrative seductiveness of Zivkovic's "impossible stories" remains distinctly his own. Open one of his books and prepare to be enchanted. - Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book Review


• Serbian master fantasist Zivkovic has written what may be the most delicious mystery by a speculative-fiction specialist since Stanislaw Lem's mind-boggling The Investigation (1974). Unlike Lem's novel, it is also a discreet, witty love story. - Publishers Weekly


• ... witty, intricate development; richly drawn, engaging characters; and ivkovi's diverse play with the underlying challenge he has set for himself: like Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's The Dead Mountaineer's Inn, these novels interrogate the possibilities and limitations of the detective genre. ... If you've not read ivkovi, indulge yourself: worlds of wonder await you. - Michael A. Morrison, World Literature Today

Genre: Urban Fantasy