Kirjahaku

Wandering between Paris, Harare and Sydney Michel Besovsky, an academic in his forties, is disgusted with the outcome of a childhood "romance" he had with his maman and dislikes children. He neglects his daughter and devotes himself to experienced lovers. The child's every effort to win her father's heart is foredoomed to failure. In the aftermath of an uneventful African f te, Blanche gives her father a good-night kiss that goes astray and shatters their life. Michel gets obsessed with his 11-year-old daughter and what malignantly sprung from a neglected love, swells monstrous all the time but the narrator calls it nothing but-love.

Peshikan's characters in Shadows of invisible dogs are strange and unconventional. The shadows of their 'own muddled life' remain simply in some 'happy afternoon' (Shadows of invisible dogs). The questions put forward are global, universally human questions: 'What is that power which, in its mindless greed destroys those over whom it rules' (From top to bottom) Or: 'For how many of us, who semantically suckled at the freedom's frequent yet feigned arousing disrobements, the future is no longer what it once was, nor will the past gets any better?... While we are waiting for the new Godot, however, why do we not finally grow up? ... Let us quietly shut our book of quotes and turn our souls, those weather-beaten gloves, to the living word, the only one that senses the irregular pulse of our human situation... It does not matter that the present situation in which we believe is not always genuine, that what we delight in is not necessarily good and that all these questions, from the beginning of time, are still awaiting their answer' (Variation on the subject of Freedom).

The Stranger, 'what was he to me, this phantom enshrouded in visions, sinking further away as the years went by, deeper and deeper into a reality, which I could but hate? What did his appearances and exits forebode? I still do not know... I would run into him on multiple occasions and in different circumstances. Besides, all these encounters coincided with major events of my life, though most of them had sunk into oblivion and now only his ghostly appearances on this stage, passing by and beyond, illuminate those rare moments.'Was he simply the good or the evil prophet? Even such discrimination was beyond my power to discern from the complicated night spirals he had woven into my path.''The atmosphere in these stories is somehow reminiscent of Patrick Modiano - a fog in which every detail is distinct and crystal-clear, yet we have no idea where we are. And we wander and jostle against each other like in a crowded aquarium, making heroic existential efforts to find out how and why we are there, and who is watching from outside' - Literary Forum