Much of the time book reviewing is a very subjective activity. You like books or you don’t. Some books work for some people, but not for others. Proving literary quality is damnably difficult, which is how come the literary establishment manages to get away with looking down its collective nose at anything outside of the narrow purview of dull realist stories about middle-aged white men.

However, the literary house of cards relies heavily on status, and when a Pulitzer Prize winning literary critic happens to review the same sort of stuff you do, and comes to the same conclusion you do, that gives you every right by their rules to say you were right to praise the work in question. Of course it helps that Michael Dirda has always been something of a fan of science fiction. But is also helps that Zoran Živković really is a very good writer. Here, Dirda says so, it must be true.

Oh, and I love the covers of the new editions of Zoran’s books too.