Presentation and discussion with the author at the end of her Styrian Artist in Residence stay in Graz. Moderated by Evelyn Schalk.

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Dhurata Hoti is an author and lives in Prishtina, Kosovo. She writes theatre plays, screenplays, short stories and journalistic texts. During her Styrian Artist in Residence stay in Graz, she worked on her third collection of short stories.

The characters in this book, which is the final part of a trilogy, explore the fears and realities of the present while carrying the burden of unresolved traumas and desires, which in turn give rise to their transformations into new realities in which conventional laws no longer apply. Weather phenomena, sounds, words and thoughts of the narrators follow the rhythm of a fragile emotional state and blur the line between reality and delusion.

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The stories and their characters in this book focus on the complexity of human existence and explore what C. G. Jung calls "shadow work". "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by becoming aware of darkness," Jung said. In this sense, some stories explore a "shadow world" in which fears and unconscious desires come to light as a "shadow persona".

However, these stories are always rooted in the factual political and social reality of a post-war country like Kosovo, steeped in the suffering and trauma of a violent past. The events of the stories, parallel to the relationships between the characters, whether in the family, social or an entirely surreal structure, reveal facets of the human condition and its (at times) convalescent nature.