Andreas Ban, a psychologist who no longer psychologizes, a writer who no longer writes, lives alone in a coastal town inCroatia. His body is failing him. He sifts through the remnants of his life-his research,books, medical records, photographs-remembering old lovers and friends, thetragedies of WWII, the breakup of Yugoslavia. Ban's memoriesof Belgrade (which he thought he had left behind) and of Amsterdam (a different world and life) alternate with meditationson hole-ridden time (ebbing away through its perforations), on his measly pension, on growing old and fragile, on the intelligence of rats and theagelessness of lobsters, on deadly nightshade. He tries to push the past away, "to land ona little island of time in which tomorrow does not exist, in whichyesterday is buried." Drndic¿ leafs through the horrors of history with a cold unflinchingwit. "The past is riddled with holes," she writes. "Souvenirs can'thelp here." And they don't.