The Inner Side of the Wind, or The Novel of Hero and Leander

Milorad Pavic, the brilliantly innovative author whose first novel, the phenomenal Dictionary of the Khazars, inspired readers to look at literature in a new and unique way, and whose second, Landscape Painted with Tea, virtually created a new set of directions by which to interpret fiction, now gives us The Inner Side of the Wind, a magically entertaining love story that spans two centuries. In his most personal and intimate work to date, Pavic parallels the myth of Hero and Leander, telling of two lovers in Belgrade, one from the turn of the eighteenth century and the other from early in the twentieth, who reach out to each other from across the gulf of time. So that the reader is afforded the opportunity to read the novel from either lover's point of view, it is approachable from either the front cover (Hero's story) or the back (Leander's). In this way, the lovers' paths converge both figuratively and physically, ultimately joining at the center of the book, no matter whose story one has chosen to explore first. In the playfully inventive manner in which it suggests new ways for language to shape human thought, The Inner Side of the Wind is everything we have come to expect from this remarkable writer: pure Pavic!