Review

Like his cleverly designed Dictionary of the Khazars , which was printed in both male and female versions, Serbian writer Pavic's lyrical and brooding new work is inventively structured. It consists of two surrealistic and remarkably beautiful stories: "Hero" begins, conventionally, at the front of the book, and "Leander" begins when the book is turned over and opened at the "back" cover. The two are linked by bits and pieces of Greek myth . Pavic's Leander, born in the 17th century, works as a merchant, traveling between Belgrade and Constantinople. He is inducted into a monastic order and eventually gains renown as the builder of a fantastic tower at the Sava Gate in Belgrade. Landscapes are rendered desolate by pillaging Austrian and Turkish armies, and Leander is killed during a bloody battle--elements that resonate strongly and bitterly today. "Hero," set in the 1920s and '30s, describes a Serbian chemistry student who is eventually murdered by her jealous lover. Like Leander, Hero lives with foreknowledge of her death. Pavic has masterfully combined many facets of the Serbian psyche in this polished work.

From Library Journal

The traditional myth of Hero and Leander is exploded in these two updated, modern, and disparate tales from the pen of one of former Yugoslavia's best-known authors. Leander's plot is the more conventional of the two. His adventures, which take place in early 18th-century Belgrade, find him compulsively building Greek churches only to see them destroyed by Turkish or Christian armies. At the end of his odyssey, Leander returns home to construct, unwittingly, his pyre. Hero's tale, set at the beginning of the 20th century, is at time fantastical and absurd, its tone lighter and more playful than Leander's because the plot is not too serious. Adapting a classic, Pavic creates modern-day mythology but parallels the fate of the protagonists in the original. For large collections.