Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla produced hundreds of inventions and ideas which have changed our lives in profound ways, ranging from alternating current to wireless communication to remote control. Tesla's AC defeated Thomas Edison's DC, but Edison is celebrated in America and Tesla is largely unknown. Where he is remembered, Tesla is known as the man who invented the twentieth century, but also as an early archetype of the mad scientist.
Vladimir Pištalo's biographical novel, "Tesla: A Portrait with Masks," covers the arc of Tesla's life, including the War of the Currents with Edison, which culminated in Tesla's triumph at the 1893 Chicago's World's Fair, to his later years, when he lived in poverty at the New Yorker Hotel. Pištalo also turns to lesser-known aspects of Tesla's life, such as his boyhood in Serbia, for insight into what drove him: a fraught relationship with his father, an Orthodox Priest, and the early death of his brother, which haunted Tesla throughout his life.
Vladimir Pištalo has published eleven books of fiction. Tesla, his first book to be translated into English, won the 2008 NIN Literary Award, the most prestigious award in Serbia, and has appeared in ten languages. He teaches at Becker College in Massachusetts.
