Hourglass

Danilo Kis was one of the most artful and eloquent writers of postwar Europe. Of all his books, Hourglass, the account of the final months in one man's life before he is sent to a concentration camp, is considered to be his masterpiece.

"What distinguishes Kiš's novel is its authorial independence. A conventional narrative structure is ignored; it is the author's musings and diversions that magically build suspense. That he succeeds is a rare achievement." --Herbert Mitgang, New York Times

"Probably no other novelist has succeeded better than Kiš in making a densely stylistic pattern out of such a nightmare, conveying with gruesome but also aesthetically beautiful effect the interrelation in such a life at such a time of the quotidian and the apocalyptic, the combination of the sense of trivia with the sense of doom." --John Bayley, New York Review of Books

"A finely sustained, complex fictional performance. It is full of pain and rage and gusto and joy of living, at once side-splitting and a heartbreaker." --John Simon, Washington Post Book World