The Cyclist Conspiracy
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"Some books grow old with years, some are rejuvenated, some remain the same. But extremely rare are those that manage to force reality to change and adapt to what is written in them. Some twenty years ago The Cyclist Conspiracy seemed like postmodern brick-a-brack. Today, it is a historical record that becomes more and more true with every new day."—David Albahari
The Cyclist Conspiracy tells the tale of a secret Brotherhood who meet in dreams, gain esoteric knowledge from contemplation of the bicycle, and seek to move in and out of history, manipulating events; the Brothers are part of a conspiracy so vast and so secret that, in many cases, the conspirators themselves are unaware of their participation in it. Told through a series of 'historical documents'—memoirs, illustrations, letters, philosophical treatises, blue prints, and maps—the novel details the story of these interventions and the historical moments where the Brotherhood has made their influence felt, from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to a lost story of Sherlock Holmes.
Masterfully intertwining the threads of waking and dreams into the fabric of the present, the past, and the future, Svetislav Basara's Pynchon-esque The Cyclist Conspiracy is a bold, funny, and imaginative romp.
Svetislav Basara is a major figure of contemporary Serbian literature and the author of over two dozen novels and short story collections. In 2006 he receive the NIN Award, and served as the Serbian Ambassador to Cyprus from 2001 to 2005.
Randall A. Major 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this first English translation of a 1988 Serbian classic, Major's translation captures the wit and wisdom of one of Serbia's most acclaimed authors. In the preface, Basara calls himself the "editor" of this anthology of found texts, personal missives, historical archives, tales, poems, lists, memoirs, manifestos, maps, and drawings "dedicated to the secret of the Evangelical Bicyclists of the Rose Cross," an elusive sect of mystics who gather in their dreams and spend their waking hours smashing timepieces, riding bicycles, and contemplating the velocipede's form and ability to "contradict gravity." Theirs is a contrarian society that sees the world afresh, from all sides, and intends to destroy systems of all kinds: philosophical, political, theological, and psychological. Or, as one of the collected scholars notes within its pages, their writings are a "product of a few liars with too much time on their hands." At once a rich philosophical tome and vision-altering spoof of the same, this "meta-goulash" will interest readers of Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.
