another novel experimenter

Don't worry, I'm still writing, just a little bit lately, so I'm saving it up before posting. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some interesting information on the original (and much more creative than I) novel experimentor, Milorad Pavić (pulled from Wikipedia):

Milorad Pavić (Милорад Павић) is a noted Serbian poet, prose writer, translator, and literary historian. His uncle, Nikola Pavić, wrote in the kajkavian dialect.

Born on October 15, 1929 in Belgrade, Pavić has written five novels that have been translated into English: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, Landscape Painted With Tea, Inner Side Of The Wind, Last Love In Constantinople and Unique Item as well as many short stories not translated to English.

Though Pavić's novels can be enjoyed by reading them cover-to-cover, among his stated goals are a desire to write novels with unusual forms, and to make the reader a more active participent than is usual. To achieve these ends, he as used a number of unconventional techniques:

* Dictionary Of The Khazars takes the form of three cross-referenced encylopaedias of the Khazar people
* Landscape Painted With Tea mixes the forms of novel and crossword puzzle
* Inner Side Of The Wind — which tells the story of Hero and Leander — can be read back to front, each section telling one character's version of the story;
* Last Love In Constantinople has chapters numbered after tarot cards; the reader is invited to use a tarot deck to determine the order the chapters are read
* Unique Item has one hundred different endings and the reader can choose one.

Last Love In Constantinople and Dictionary Of The Khazars both have male and female versions, which differ in only a few brief, critical passages.

He has also written one play. There are more than 80 translations of his writing, into many languages.