Destiny, Annotated

”The most lavishly awarded novel in the history of Serbian literature. Destiny, Annotated balances postmodern self-awareness with an imagination grounded in history and tradition. Here is the embodiment of historiographic metafiction, a self-reflexive narrative that examines not only its own historical postulates but also the grounds and scope of historical knowledge itself. Readers will find themselves skillfully catered to, whether they prefer the traditional or the avant-garde. Petković gives us characters caught in the whirlwind of history, heroes who face their destinies and say no. Spanning the period from the 18th century to the 20th, this novel also conjures a fanciful and highly (post)modern vision of the place we know from Borges, that garden of forking paths.”

Tihomir Brajović

Radoslav Petković was born in Belgrade in 1953. He has published novels, short stories, essays and translations from English. His major works include the novels Put u Dvigrad (1979, The Road to Dvigrad), Senke na zidu (1985, Shadows on the Wall), and Sudbina i komentari (1993, Destiny, Annotated); the short-story collections Izveštaj o kugi (1989, An Account of the Plague), Čovek koji je živeo u snovima (1998, The Man who Lived in Dreams), and Savršeno sećanje na smrt (2008, The Perfect Remembrance of Death); as well as the essay collections Ogled o mački (1995, Consider the Cat), O Mikelanđelu govoreći (2006, Speaking of Michelangelo) and Vizantijski internet (2007, Byzantium Online). Petković has won several of Serbia’s top literary awards, including the NIN, the Meša Selimović, the Miloš Crnjanski, and the Ivo Andrić Prize. Besides English, his work has been translated into French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, and Slovak.