With an Unopened Umbrella in the Pouring Rain

The Olcinium Trilogy brings together three of Nikolaidis’ short novels: The Son, The Coming and Till Kingdom Come, which together encompass an apocalyptic vision of this ancient town; where mystics have prophesized, regimes plotted against their citizenry and ordinary people resorted to crime and deceit in order to survive. Like his literary hero, Thomas Bernhard, Nikolaidis’ prose is precise and bitingly funny and his protagonists hopeless misanthropes: from the local sleuth who sacrifices truth for the sake of telling his clients the stories they want to hear to the local reporter who discovers that his own past was concocted by Yugoslav secret services and enters a state of time-traveling paranoia.