Svetislav Basara: The Cyclist Conspiracy

Exterior surfaces

High-tension steel reinforced walls — not to be painted. Entrances (all 7) painted with traffic colors: orange, yellow and black.

In front of entrance 4, place gigantic monument II PSYCHOANALYSIS. Open supplemental competition for monument design.

Eugène Ionesco

Emil Cioran

Geo Bogza

Mircea Eliade

Nadia Comaneci

Elena Popescu

Eduard Sam

Andrija Hebrang

Miloš Crnjanski

Rastko Petrović

Dragiša Vasić

Aleksandar I Karađorđević

Dragoljub Protić

Slobodan Jovanović

Mihajlo Pupin

Nikolaj Velimirović

Katalin Karady

Gavrilo Princip

Joseph Kowalsky

Jovan Veselinov

Joseph V. Dzhugashvili

Jovan Cvijić

Geca Kon

Çulaba Çulabi

Žarko Basara

Radiša Kovačević

Jovan Kaljević

Jelena Milijević

Milovan Ðilas

Milisav Savić

Steve Tesich

Edvard Kocbek

Dragan Džajić

Srđan Dragojević

Milan Matović

Gojko Tešić

Leon Koen

Srđan Šaper

Cvetan Todorov

Cola Dragojčeva

Ioannis Ziziulas

Janis Ricos

Alexis Carrington

Leonid Šejka

Bora Ćosić

Amfilohije Radović

Nikos Kazantzakis

Nikola Milošević

Ranko Jovović

Marko Ćirić

Nedeljko Rakić

Suzana Mančić

Ljuba Popović

Branko Kukić

Olja Ivanjicki

Kole Čašule

Gojko Nikoliš

Slobodan Milošević

Milan Popović

Živojin Pavlović

Ilija Gorkić

Svetislav Veizović

Cvitko Bdlić

Eddy Merckx

Sonja Savić

Dobrica Ćosić

Slobodan Gavrilović

Laslo Vegel

Miodrag

Petrović-Čkalja

Bohumil Hrabal

Jonathan Koehler

Jozef Škvorecki

John Glenn

Martina Navratilova

Marina Švabić

Slobodan Milivojević-Era

Goranka Matić

Nadin De Free Shop

Milojko Knežević

Predrag Marković

Mihajlo Pantić

Slavko Šajber

Mila Kostić

Ljiljana Tica

Vlada Mijanović

Dragan Blagojević

Freddy Mercury

Laura Jane Richardson

John Cleese

Charles Santos

George W. Bush, Jr.

Ignatius Reilly

Ken Scandlyn

Charlton Heston

George Harrison

Michael Moore

Denise Huddle

Louise Ciccone

Gary Hardwick

Steven Hawking

Oscar Wilde

Simon Gill

Emmanuel Radnitzky

Mikhail Bakhtin

Homer Simpson

Eddie “Son” House

Woody Allen

Note:

List is incomplete

and unverified

Svetislav Basara is a major figure of contemporary Serbian literature and the author of five collections of short stories, thirteen novels, a dozen books of essays, plays, and novellas. In 2006, Basara received the NIN Award for his novel The Rise and Fall of Parkinson’s Disease . His 1985 novel, Chinese Letter , is also available in English translation. Basara 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, Serbia, and is also one of the editors and translators of the Serbian Prose in Translation series produced by Geopoetika Publishing in Belgrade in cooperation with the Serbian Ministry of Culture.

Open Letter — the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press — is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.

Making world literature available in English is crucial to opening our cultural borders, and its availability plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant book culture. Open Letter strives to cultivate an audience for these works by helping readers discover imaginative, stunning works of fiction and by creating a constellation of international writing that is engaging, stimulating, and enduring.

Current and forthcoming titles from Open Letter include works from Argentina, Bulgaria, Catalonia, China, Iceland, Poland, and many other countries.

www.openletterbooks.org

* In ink that becomes visible only after two-hundred years, majordomo Grossman left the following note in the margins of the manuscript:

“On the order of the king-dishwasher I am copying this nonsense full of blasphemy and spitting upon me, Grossman, I who was just about to finish my doctorate and I who would be a doctor if evil tongues had not accused me of heresy. The fact is that he sees the future; any fool can prophesy. But what else can an educated man do in this time except to put up with the whims of madmen. Charles has become arrogant. He boasts of being the keeper of the faith, and he doesn’t believe in God, nor does God believe in him. A few years ago he knelt before the crucifix, just for the sake of things (may the omnipotent one forgive me), and the cross fell down and knocked old Hideous on the head. Since then the knot on his head has not receded. It makes him even more hideous, if that’s possible. In associating with me in that unfortunate tavern he learned a little bit about theology and now he constantly babbles about it to the courtiers who, pretending, flatter him and shout their approval. Why, recently he humiliated me in front of the followers while we were discussing whether women have souls. Non habet , I claimed, and was proving it, when Charles says: Huh, not only do they not have a soul, women don’t exist at all. And then he said that since he had placed the vagina as the center of the female organism he had cleared the way for Nicolaus Copernicus, and that since he claimed that women don’t exist, he was the forerunner of existentialism, some devilish thing. God save us! But even the Devil isn’t that dark. Realizing that he’d gone too far, he feigned to repent and confessed. But not for long. As soon as Father Albert, his confessor, came back from the blasphemy he had to listen to, the Hideous executed Queen Margot just because she returned a look from the Baron Von Kurtiz. He executed the baron as well, of course. He boasts of having driven nails into the back of the throne, that he is constantly crucifying himself. He did put the nails in, but he also took a file and shaved them dull by his own hand. And anyway, because of his rheumatism, he always wears an ox-hide vest. The genius of half truth. Now he wants to write the history of the world ahead of time, and I have to participate in that lunacy. May God have mercy on me and on Europe.”