By the author of the highly acclaimed literary bestseller Dictionary of the Khazars, Landscape Painted with Tea, Milorad Pavić’s novel, is a tale of mysterious quest that is part modern Odyssey and part crossword puzzle. It begins with the story of a brilliant but failed architect in Belgrade and his search for his father, an officer who vanished in Greece during World War II. The truth about his fate – some of it set in motion 2,000 years ago and some of it by the Nazis – is raveled in the history and secrets of Mount Athos, the most ancient of all monasteries, perched atop its inaccessible mountain on the Aegean.* * *“I wrote Landscape Painted with Tea employing a favorite and long-known manner of reading which, however, has not been used in literature – the crossword puzzle. The novel can be read down or across, inside it you can find a heroine that falls in love with the reader, and her fate differs depending on wh...