Intent! Or the Mirror of Death

Petro Piatochkin discovers his phenomenal memory when still a schoolboy. One glance at a book suffices to memorize the subject-matter. His bizarre talent makes him an outsider, an oddball who immerses himself in academic tomes about time and consciousness. After conducting experiments on himself, he realizes he is able to recall events he cannot possibly have experienced. During a visit to »Café Kosmos«, the Russian bookshop in Lviv, Petro meets a young abstract painter from Montreal. Bearing titles like »Misted Mirror« or »Intent!«, her paintings seem to him like symbols of his own »memory art«. He believes he discerns in her works an ability matching his own to see parallel worlds. And so begins a passionate love affair…

»Daring, playfulness and satirical delight [...] literary skill in producing atmosphere and intensity, tender sounds and strikingly drawn characters.« Literaturen

»Since the appearance of Cult, a boarding-school tale as fantastic as it was drastic, Ljubko Deresch has been viewed as the ‘literary Wunderkind’ of a lost generation – and not just in his Ukrainian homeland.« Profil

»In his novels, Deresch finds a tone of his own that is symptomatic of the new beginning made by Ukrainian literature in the 21st century. He liberates writing from the fixation on nationalist concerns, and mocks the anti-Russian conspiracy theories circulating in his homeland. Even the iconic martyrs of Ukrainian literature figure in Deresch only as yellowing saintly images, long since ousted by the new idols Jack Kerouac, John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen.« Neue Zürcher Zeitung