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Hired to write a travel article for a magazine, Ulan-Bator ventures to Mongolia, where he finds a cast of odd and outlandish expatriates, including an ex-Red Army officer turned Buddhist, a French zombie, and an American correspondent for a newspaper that no longer exists. At the center of this philosophical romance is the Genghis Khan Hotel, where a group of drunken intellectuals endlessly debate a new cosmological theory proposing that the world itself is a hologram.
About the author
Born in 1953, Svetislav Basara is a major figure in Serbian and Eastern European literature. The author of more than twenty novels, essay and short story collections, he is also the winner of numerous awards and honors, including the NIN Prize in 2008. Between 2001 and 2005 Basara served as Serbia and Montenegro's ambassador to Cyprus.Randall A. Major is a linguist and translator. He teaches in the English department at the University of Novi Sad, and is one of the editors and translators of the Serbian Prose in Translation series produced by Geopoetika Publishing in Belgrade. His translations of Basara’s In Seach of the Grail and Fata Morgana are also available from Dalkey Archive Press.
Summary
Hired to write a travel article for a magazine, Ulan-Bator ventures to Mongolia, where he finds a cast of odd and outlandish expatriates, including an ex-Red Army officer turned Buddhist, a French zombie, and an American correspondent for a newspaper that no longer exists. At the center of this philosophical romance is the Genghis Khan Hotel, where a group of drunken intellectuals endlessly debate a new cosmological theory proposing that the world itself is a hologram.
Additional text
[Svetislav Basara's] inventiveness is a strength, indeed a talent.
–World Literature Review