Peščanik

The novel Hourglass is the last part in the trilogy called Family Circus by Danilo Kiš. ‘It is dedicated to a mythical father figure, the ‘man of air’, the wandering philosopher, the ‘muromant’ (person who deciphers and reads wall stains), the railway clerk, the drunk, and world explainer, who is like some other kind of wandering Jew prowling through the since then vanished – no – destroyed continent of ‘Pannonia’. Deep into the most hidden burrows of his biography Kiš explores, researches, and – even when he is going over his most daily common tasks – still praises and celebrates his bizarre hero, who is an utopian person of high aims and shattering falls, of nervous breakdowns and calm self-assurance, a ‘man of air’ then, who is floating above earth, and onto whom nevertheless all the calamities of the world rain upon. […] Danilo Kiš assembles established facts, made-up stories, possibilities, found and invented ideas together into a towering work of art on the hight of our times to thereby recreate the bludgeoned and deleted childhood of his past.’ (Karl-Markus Gauß in „Die Zeit“)