Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

Bruno Schulz · 1892–1942 · Poland (Galicia)

Originally Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą (Polish)

Why it matters

A son visits a sanatorium where his dead father still lives, time run backward. Schulz's second and last collection deepens his hallucinatory, myth-drenched vision before the Holocaust cut his work short.

At a glance

Hallucinatory, metaphor-dense prose and dissolving time and logic resist a literal reading.