Natasa Pantovic

Sunday's Times Art and Culture Section, Ama or Playing Glass Bead Game with Pythagoras historical fiction rreview and iinterview with Novelist Nataša Pantović https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/a-beautiful-mind.810384 “Seated on a panel with her fellow writers, Maltese-Serbian novelist Nataša Pantović has been known to use slam poetry to perform her poetic body of work. Like her prose, the improvised words, tribal music, percussionist sounds, lengthy ‘aum' chanting, are neither too preposterous nor too earnest but endlessly curious. A bridge builder between East and West, following ancient archaeological findings, she often dives into historic settings more than 2,000 years back in time. In her novel, Ama: Playing the Glass Bead Game with Pythagoras, the 52-year-old author makes a bold swerve into less-travelled territory. She chooses for her protagonists Ama, an African priestess, living in China's Macao in the 17th century; Ruben, a Portuguese Jesuit priest; and Fr Benedict, an Orthodox Christian.” "Was Athens black at the time of the ancient Greeks or was it full of Slavs that during the Dark Ages were not allowed to have their own European history? All my characters do have strong political, ideological and moral commitments, their ideas are ground-breaking; it is a science against the Church, male against female, East against West conversation. Holding up a mirror to society of ancient worlds can be fanatical or too obvious within the storytelling environment, so I had to break the rhythm with myths, with art, with dreams. This novel is, of course, about the search for truth, but from the goddess perspective, about love and union, of the priestesses that have given us the first commandment “Do not kill...”" Nataša in an interview with Sunday Times