The Coming is an explosive mixture on three levels: a hard-boiled investigation, the story of an impending global catastrophe, and the description of daily life in a small Balkan city. Imagine Dashiell Hammett meeting Umberto Eco, and both of them meeting Orhan Pamuk! If there is justice in the world, Nikolaidis' novel should become a bestseller bigger than the novels of James Patterson or John Grisham. And since there is no justice in the world, let us hope that a divine caprice will nonetheless make this insanely readable page-turner a mega success.' -- Slavoj Zizek

Andrej Nikolaidis is Montenegro's most controversial writer, as well as being its most awarded one. His first critically acclaimed novel Mimesis (2003) was followed by The Son (2006), The Coming (2009), Till Kingdom Come (2012) and The Hungarian Sentence (2016). An ardent supporter of Montenegrin independence, anti-war activist and promoter of human rights, Nikolaidis became known for his political views and public feuds. He writes regular columns for the daily Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti, and has written a number of articles for the Guardian UK.

In a small town on the Adriatic coast, a local detective is content to sacrifice truth for the sake of telling his clients the stories they want to hear. At first, The Coming reads as a traditional detective novel, but suddenly changes form with the advent of snow in midsummer. When the town library burns down under mysterious circumstances, the detective s longlost son begins to get involved in the investigations from afar. He takes the reader on excursions into history and recounts the life of Fra Dolcino, a medieval heretic who announced the return of the Messiah and also illuminates the life and work of Sabbatai Zevi, a Renaissance cabalist, who maintained that he himself was the Messiah. We learn that Sabbatai Zevi died in Ulcinj and left behind a manuscript, The Book of Return, which remains hidden. The unsolved mysteries of both past and present, as well as environmental anomalies, serve to create the sense of an impending apocalypse, giving way in the final chapter to a postapocalyptic reality.