Песочен часовник

Laconically but at the same time with an abundance of irony, masterfully playing with the conventions of prose writing and with expectations of his readers, Isakovski writes in his 17 stories collected in this volume about the loneliness of his characters. They are not alone, they have friends and relationships – but still they are lonely. They barely speak to one another, rather they talk past each other in their apartments or bars in Skopje where stories take place and where they smoke and drink but not for pleasure but because of a kind of a passive despair or maybe out of boredom or dullness. The title of the first story functions almost as a motto: Nothing special happens. A serene fatigue is felt, a passive attitude towards life, despite the longing after love and happiness: “The stars were there, in arm’s length. I didn’t stretch it.”