Sometime, when I am given a book by a new author to read, I find myself a little apprehensive. This was the case when I picked up Impossible Stories. The idea of an author writing fantasy in Serbian and then having it translated into English seemed a little disturbing. After all, you could have a superb collection of stories spoiled by weak translations.

However, as I started to read I found it difficult to believe that the stories hadn't originally been written English – the translation was flawless! This left me free to enjoy the collection and what a collection it was! In the introduction Paul Di Filippo refers to Zoran Živković as a modern master and this is no exaggeration. I can say, hand on heart, Zoran is one of the best authors I have ever read.

The collection of stories is split into five main sections: Time Gifts; Impossible Encounters; Seven Touches of Music; The Library and Steps Through the Mist. Each section has a number of stories with a common thread running through them and the whole collection is completed by the final story "The Telephone" which has a rather stylish twist in the tale.

As I said this is the first work by Živković that I have ever read. I am confident that it will not be the last. In fact I would love to see how Zoran's writing style translated into a longer format.

We have been fortunate enough to receive a number of PS Publishing books over the last few years and I have always been struck by the quality of the works they publish. They are not afraid to publish newer authors to the UK and so far I have not been disappointed by any of their books. Whoever is responsible for deciding which books get published obviously knows his stuff and doesn't seem to fall into the easy trap of "the author is famous so the book must be good".

At the start of this review I referred to the genre of collection as "fantasy". To be honest that is as close as I can get to a categorisation and it doesn't really do justice to Zoran Živković. Even if you are not a fan of classic fantasy give this collection a try. I promise you will not regret it!

As I have said many times, I am not usually a fan of short stories but in future I would always make an exception for the writing of Zoran Živković. I found the whole collection completely addictive with writing of an exceptionally high quality. Absolutely astounding! Writing doesn't get any better than this.

Synopsis
For years, Zoran Živković has awed, entertained, and tantalized the world of fantastic literature with his ingenious and moving fabulations, tales of ordinary, often isolated people facing and being transfigured by the strange, the improbable. Logic and illogic meet head-on in Živković's stories, and the outcome is always deeply memorable. Now, for the first time, Impossible Stories assembles between a single set of covers five of the author's distinguished story-cycles, as well as the stand-alone 'The Telephone': twenty-nine stories in all.

In Impossible Stories you will find:

Time Gifts: A mysterious visitor comes to see three desperate human beings across the ages: an astronomer, a paleolinguist, and an old watch-maker; he has a unique but ambiguous time-gift for each one of them. His true identity is known only to an insane artist locked up in her asylum studio. But who would believe an artist in this world, even if she were not insane?

Impossible Encounters: Six strangely related stories about encounters that could or should never have happened. Including conversations with God and the Devil, with an alien and one's older self; and the answer to the enigma: where do off-duty story characters go?

Seven Touches of Music: Seven stories about moments of divine revelation through music, which leave no mark beyond the ephemeral instant of their perception. Among the remarkable epiphanies witnessed are an old widower glimpsing an alternate existence, a librarian dreaming the death of all knowledge, and an artist's rendering of inscrutable alien messages.

The Library: A cycle of six thematically linked stories, droll renditions of the nightmares ensuing upon misplaced, or (of course) excessive, bibliophilia. A writer encounters a website where all his possible future books are on display; a lonely man faces an infinite flow of hardback books through his mailbox; a connoisseur of hardcovers strives to expel a lone paperback from his collection...

Steps Through the Mist: Five women of various ages face, each in her own way, what seems to be the deterministic trap of Fate. A schoolteacher, a fortune-teller, a young woman on a skiing holiday, an inflexible old spinster, a girl who can collapse reality into any shape: when another dreams you, or controls you, or invests you with godlike power, can there be any escape, ever?