Can a novel be read like a crossword puzzle, revealing different destinies depending on whether you read it across or down?

Landscape Painted with Tea is one of Milorad Pavić’s most inventive works, published in 1988. Part modern Odyssey, part literary game, the novel follows Atanas Svilar, a brilliant but failed architect searching for his missing father in the ancient monasteries of Mount Athos.

The book’s structure mimics a crossword puzzle. The reader can choose to read it "across" to follow a linear love story, or "down" to delve into the lives of the characters. In a twist typical of Pavić’s magical realism, the book’s heroine eventually falls in love with the reader themselves.

Rich with symbolism, folklore, and mystery, this novel challenges the boundaries between author, character, and audience, turning the act of reading into an act of creation.