Andrej Nikolaidis, Will Firth (translator) · 2009 · EPUB · Calibre ID 7415
Resurfaced in The Day After His Arrival (2026-10-22).
Role in the triad
The novelist’s case: a noir in Ulcinj where Sabbatai’s followers burn books so he can return; the non-occurrence of the End as the catastrophe.
Why this book
Fiction set in Sabbatai’s exile town that can be checked line by line against Scholem (birth, exile, death date, last words); Kafka epigraph and Dr Schulz’s catalogue of failed Ends. Montenegrin Dolazak 2009; English © 2011 (Dzanc).
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “The non-occurrence of the catastrophe was a catastrophe which ultimately made the world impossible to live in.” (ch. 9) | “Truth always appears as a fiction and takes the form of a story. I am a storyteller.” (ch. 1) | “The third was now dug out of its tomb: the Messiah could come again.” (ch. 6) | “He died in Ulcinj on 30 September 1676. That was Yom Kippur.” (ch. 6) | “When a good sleuth and God are finished, no further interpretation is possible, there’s only applause” (ch. 8) | “The Apocalypse had been a kind of solution, after all.” (ch. 9) | “The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival” (Kafka, epigraph)
Themes
apocalypse · book burning · detective fiction · Dönme · failed end-dates · fathers and sons · Fra Dolcino · Kafka · Sabbatai Zevi · storytelling · Ulcinj