April 16, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York Times Book Review says Zoran Živković may be the “new Borges”

Charleston, S.C. – In a review yesterday of Seven Touches of Music, a mosaic novel by World Fantasy Award winner Zoran Živković, the New York Times Book Review wrote, “And then, every so often, you come across a work whose vividness and vitality are so abundant they seem to transcend language. The Serbian author Zoran Živković (not to be confused with the former prime minister of Serbia) already has many passionate supporters in America, and though it is too soon to crown him the new Borges, SEVEN TOUCHES OF MUSIC ... makes him a leading candidate for the position.”

Živković, who has often been compared to such luminaries as Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Franz Kafka, and Stanislew Lem, signed with Aio Publishing Company, LLC, last year for the American and Canadian release of three of his highly acclaimed mosaic novels, with more likely to follow. Seven Touches of Music is the first offering of the three by the company.

In Seven Touches of Music, seven men and women privately encounter one thing in a uniquely powerful experience: music. For a librarian, it’s a dream of dangerous intensity that visits while she sleeps—and later when she’s awake, threatening the destruction of what she holds most dear. For a woman in a train station, visions come without warning and horribly, without mercy. For a retiree, it’s a language no human can read. For a professor, it’s nothing less than an epiphany, the answer to the universe—but he has no way to record it and only minutes before his life fades. And for a violin-maker’s apprentice, it’s a mystery that can never be solved, only escaped.

“Though some of the scenarios may be stock, Živković’s renderings of them never are—he invariably finds some kernel of transcendence in routine and unexamined rituals,” wrote reviewer Dave Itzkoff for the New York Times Book Review. He also praised the book’s translator, Alice Copple-Tošić.

The review also called the mosaic novel a “well-produced and elegant little book”. The book took top honors for its design at the 2006 Chicago Book Clinic Book and Media Show in the general trade category, the second such award in a row for Aio Publishing Company, which designs its books in-house. Incorporating a supple European-styled, premium-grade Skivertex cover in a deep charcoal color custom-mixed for the cover, foil embossing in black and green, and ridged black end sheets as well as black-edged interior paper, the mosaic novel was produced using animal-friendly materials and recycled, acid-neutral paper.

Tiffany Jonas, founder and publisher of the small press, reports compliments about the design have been pouring in from readers, librarians, and reviewers since the book’s publication in September. “We strive to present fine works of speculative fiction to readers in designs befitting the high quality of the stories themselves,” she says. “We’re enormously gratified to think we may have succeeded with Zoran’s novel. It was very a tall order indeed to develop a design that would do justice to his very innovative work.”
The second contracted mosaic novel by Živković, Steps Through the Mist, also priced at $23.95, is slated for publication in September, with the third, Impossible Encounters, planned for September 2008. As with Seven Touches of Music, each will appear as standalone volumes of similar design so the three can ultimately be collected as a set. “Živković’s works each have such conceptual richness and depth,” explains Jonas, “they really merit a significant breadth of space of their own. The thoughtful reader will want to taste the surface—to roll it around the tongue, so to speak, then let the ideas breathe. It takes time to fully digest the philosophical underpinnings and wonders beneath the surface of each story, and that’s what we’re trying to provide.”

Aio Publishing Company was founded in January 2004 in Charleston, S.C. Dedicated to broadening speculative fiction bookshelves by adding works of a literary and sociological strain featuring deeply developed characters, the company seeks to publish complex, satisfying fiction in a high quality format encompassing visually striking covers, quality paper, graceful typesetting, and innovative design. With the exception of its flagship novel, a limited edition of World Fantasy Award winner Ian R. MacLeod’s The Summer Isles, the company’s books are distributed by Independent Publishers Group. For details about the company and its books, see www.aiopublishing.com.

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For more information, contact:

Tiffany Jonas, Publisher
Aio Publishing Company, LLC
P.O. Box 30788
Charleston , SC 29417
trjonas@aiopublishing.com
843.224.3698
843.225.3698 fax