Nataša Pantović: ‘I meditate in an attempt to recall my dreams’ Maltese-Serbian novelist Nataša Pantović tells all in our Q&A 9 September 2020, 8:00am by Laura Calleja

Nataša Pantović is a Maltese-Serbian novelist, management consultant, adoptive parent, and ‘ancient worlds explorer’ based in Malta. Ama: Playing the Glass Bead Game with Pythagoras and other books by Pantović are published by Artof4Elements can be purchased on Amazon.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Meditate in an attempt to recall my dreams. A dream diary is the most beautiful technique I’ve learned from Jung – he understood dreams to be messages from the unconscious, and through his own self-analysis, containing imagery that illustrates our internal soul “messaging” system.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

My dad, who had a PhD in law, used to discuss ancient philosophers with me, introducing me to Aristotle’s ‘eudaimonia’ - the “long-term happiness” that achieved throughout a lifetime when human beings achieve health, wealth, knowledge, friends and this in turn leads to the perfection of human nature... What do you never leave the house without? A book or a note-book...

Pick three words that describe yourself “Arche”, “Logos”, and “Harmonia”.

What do you consider to be your greatest achievement? I could morph into a dolphin…

What is your guiltiest pleasure? Reading the Babylon stories written in 2,500 BC. Researching Ancient Greek, Chinese and Egyptian characters or Akkadian that symbolically narrate the stories of advanced civilizations of 2,500 BC. Discovering “real” history or how I call it “playing the glass bead game with Pythagoras”.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you? I “jumped” into the role of parenting, adopting as a single mother, two instead of one kid (as originally planned) even though I had no husband to support me within this journey. The madness of my little “mission” left me at home, babysitting and writing books, one after the other, since my creative flow kept overpowering me. Life is FLOW!

Property and cars aside what’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought?

Leonardo da Vinci’s A3 size Complete Book of Art. What is one thing you wish you knew when you were younger? Music, one thing I did not get as a gift from my parents. Perhaps I will be reborn as a musician.

Who’s your inspiration? Giordano Bruno, Herman Hesse, and Tolstoy.

What has been your biggest challenge? Original thinking. Any author’s dream is to be able to play the audience like a conductor does an orchestra. Take it onto a journey.

If you weren’t an ‘Ancient Worlds Consciousness Researcher’ what would you be doing?

I have already hugged a 3,000-years-old Maori tree in New Zealand and crossed the Savanah on foot and slept in the deserts of Africa, and climbed the hills of Nepal, danced barefoot under starry nights… so not researching, assuming the kids are no longer in need of my support, would probably take me back to exploring Serbian hills...

Do you believe in God? As a dynamic, Orphic, hermaphrodite Universe of Consciousness, Yin and Yang manifestations... then yes.

If you could have dinner with any person, dead or alive, who would it be? The full cast of Ama, my fiction book: the bat, who is also a story-teller, Pythagoras, who I (as a writer) meet jumping through a universal consciousness portal, Ama, the Kenyan goddess who meets the philosophers in her coffee house, Father Benedict, an Orthodox priest, her father Ottavio who is an alchemist… wow, what a party!

What’s your worst habit?

Never ending my stories. I was re-writing A-Ma for long 10 years. The issue of white supremacy, the institutional racism, female vs. male conflict, the East vs. West struggle, the Yin vs. Yang or Dogs vs. Cats, it is a story repeated over and over again. If you are a reader, you probably get one masterpiece a year, a book that is a must read, and as an educated audience, you are deeply grateful to be holding this type of a book in your hands, but it still does not change your life. How many books have changed your life? Will a book be read in 30 years? Will my book be read in 30 years?

What are you like when you’re drunk?

I have never ever been drunk. Can you believe this? I also do not take any medication...

Who would you have play you in a film?

I wouldn’t have me “played” in a film. But I would have my daughter play Ama...

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Conscious and sub-conscious abuse of one’s own body or mind or emotions... I feel deep sorrow when people abuse the gift of life.

What music would you have played at your funeral? Jamming jazz by all participants.

What is your most treasured material possession? Tobby, my cat, even though she “owns” us, not the other way round.

What is your earliest memory? Taking a teddy bear to the hospital in Belgrade, Serbia, that was closed for visits, to my sister who was operated and was gone from my life, for more than three months. I recall, at the age of 3, running under the nursing sister’s legs to give her the bear.

When did you last cry, and why? I cry at all times. My friend Karl Pace has just died of burning injuries, his boat set on fire...

Who would you most like to meet? Quentin Tarantino.

What’s your favorite food? As a vegetarian, a veggie meal from Krishna or a mix of forest berries from Serbia.

Who’s your favorite person on social media right now? I’m old-school. I read the newspaper. I still watch movies in the cinema, I buy the front row tickets. When I write a poem, or a story, I do not do it on a computer… all these handsome actors trying to act tortured, trying to look miserable. The life that is not real, does not appeal to me. So, no social media for me. Thanks, but no thanks...

If you could travel in time, where would you go? Ancient Malta’s Temple culture, and the time of Serbian Vinca so that I could compare the two.

What book are you reading right now? Babylonian Life and History by Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge (1884). Together with Lingua Maltese Studio Storico Etnografico e Filolgico by Caruana, published in 1896 in Italian. The latter, I have had the honour of holding it in my hands.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Travel through time.

What’s one thing you want to do before you die? Spend two months in Peru.

What music are you listening to at the moment? A soundtrack from Emir Kusturica’s film “Arizona Dream” by Goran Bregovic.

In the shower or when you’re working out, what do you sing/listen to? Mantras of all religions like Kirya Si, Shiva Shakti, Halleluya, AuM allaH, my kids hate me for it... the neighbours are convinced that I am a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Christian in a dire need of some psychiatric help. Sometimes the kids, passers-by or dogs sing with me.

I did not expect to like this one nearly as much as I did. I figured it was a cute concept with a WOC as a main character and as royalty, which was an especially nice touch, but I did not anticipate the awesomeness. There's just too much to love here.

It got me right at the beginning when she was yelling at her parents about ever putting her in a tower with a dragon. Then the story started to play out and I just...

It looks all I-just-want-to-kill-the-helpless-princess-trope at the beginning and then the feminism with all kinds of intersections just gets on everything. I mean, she even calls out her prince for calling her fair when she's a black princess. Then it goes on to call out all sorts of feminist things like this: 

then there's catcalling and so much other fun stuff and it's just volume 1! I read the first chapter to my son and he really enjoyed it, asking for the second and then the third. We had to stop there because it was bedtime but you get the picture. It's not just fun for girls. I now have plans to binge through the rest just as soon as I finish the book I just got from the library. Okay, I'm just kidding. The boy liked it enough that we may binge through together for a while.

These are the top ten books I'm glad I listened to! I'm sure they would have nice to read too, but the narrators all these all added a little something to them. 

Check out the rest of the Broke and Bookish's TTT Audio Freebie!

It's not very often that a work of fiction gets to me as much as this one did. It was beautiful and haunting and familiar and foreign all at the same time.

The book is written as a sort of memoir. The protagonist reminds the reader several times that it is both fiction and memoir. She goes travels between the present and the past and doesn't always let us know and that can be confusing at times. It lends to the feeling that the protagonist is haunted by her past, that she can so easily drift into memories and stop seeing the world as it is around her in that moment. I loved that it gave a bigger picture of the protagonist as a person, that these events of her past still had a hold of her, but that she was working to let them go.

There is something very powerful about taking deliberate time to work through what haunts us, to let go of the shame we feel in our past, to stop letting it hurt us.

I'll be honest, I listened to the audiobook, which was 13 hours long and read by Emily Woo Zeller. Zeller is amazing, giving the book a full performance, complete with the reverie that really let me know when she was drifting between times. Fortunately, having listened instead of read the book, I could hear the pronunciations of the beautiful names that I would have otherwise just butchered.

As far as the feminist side of things go, this is definitely one of those books that I picked it solely because of Women In Translation month and would not have found any other way. It's proof that setting out to find diverse books to read on purpose allows me to find books that would not have otherwise been in my path and to appreciate stories that I would not otherwise have the opportunity to hear/read. It lets me step into places and history that I was never aware of, such as a sweatshop in Korea during the last century. In that same vein, it's great to read the stories of ordinary women. I know we get caught up in the women breaking barriers and starting revolutions, but we need to remember the ordinary women too. We need to remember the ones who join unions and those who don't, the ones who can only go to school because of work programs, the ones who finish and those who don't, the ones who find their dreams and those who don't.

While the content keeps this from being the kind of story that I could recommend to anyone, this is the kind of book I wish they would include in curriculum for world or Eastern literature. To use her own words to explain the importance of this:

History is in charge of putting things in order and society is in charge of defining them. The more order we achieve, the more truth is hidden behind that neat surface... Perhaps literature is about throwing into disarray what has been defined... About making a mess of things, all over again.

If diversity or feminism or women's lives are among the things you like to read about, this is definitely a book for you. Also, check out the rest of Shin's books here.