hmm… should this go in MPSIMS? Oh, well.
This evening’s Voyager re-run, “Waking Moments,” has aliens based on the “Dream Riders” from Milorad Pavic’s Dictionary of the Khazars. For some reason, Eastern European literature fell out of fashion when the Berlin Wall fell, but Pavic ranks with Milan Kundera as one of the best. The Dictionary is actually a small encyclopedia from which the story of the Khazar nation unfolds. It can be read in any, or no particular order, and tells the same story from a Christian, Muslim and Jewish point of view. Pavic also wrote A Landscape Painted with Tea, a novel which is also a crossword puzzle.