Tesla, a portrait with masks

PISTALO IS A MODERN CLASSIC

“Beautifully written, immensely entertaining, and astonishingly original in the way it tells the story of a man who they used to say ‘invented the twentieth century,’ but whose life is still an enigma, Tesla: A Portrait with Masks has the richness, the high jinks and the originality of such modern classics as Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Charles Simic

“Much has been written about Nikola Tesla, but Vladimir Pištalo’s extraordinary and profoundly original novel manages to tell us something entirely new — not only about the brilliant ‘mad-genius’ inventor but also about the ways in which literature and the imagination can transform biography into great art.” Francine Prose

“Tesla is a profoundly absorbing meditation on the early, defining years of the modern age. Vladimir Pištalo has drawn a lightning-etched portrait of a genius as powerful, as transformative and as mysterious as electricity itself.” Ken Kalfus

“Vladimir Pistalo’s new novel abounds with energy. His sentences crackle with fantastical images… Tesla is a dynamo of a novel, and Pistalo writes as though he’s fueled by a power plant of his own devising.” Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“A compelling fictionalized account of inventor Nikola Tesla’s inscrutable and solitary life… Pištalo’s thorough account of a great man’s personality and habits is done to fine effect.” Publishers Weekly

“A novel aflame with the energy of a singular life… Pištalo’s potent imagination allows him to see beyond the events into Tesla’s tortured heart, exposing the proud visionary’s existential fears and his strange delusions… Thanks to talented translators, English-speaking readers now share a prize-winning Serbian masterpiece.” Booklist, starred review