M HKA Ensembles

Book, 20.9 x 14 cm, 87 p., language : English, publisher : Antenne Publishing, London & Frenetic Happiness, Paris, ISBN : 978-1-908806-02-4.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2028/380).

Literary synopsis

Time is the Assassin takes the form of an autobiographical novel, ghostwritten by Kristian Skylstad. The story follows Victor, his two brothers, and two of their friends on a night out in the neighborhood were Victor grew up (and Skylstad too, as chance would have it.) Time is the Assassin is narrated chiefly in the form of a dialog between the five of them, interspersed with flashbacks to Victor's past and the increasingly perverse and surreal events of their intoxicated night as it unfolds, out of Victor's hands. Autobiographical truth and the presumed consistency of Victor's self gradually unravels as it merges with Skylstad's attempts at expanding the reflective operations of his character across an insurmountable array of topics and references, abandoning the concept of autobiography in favour of a furious, interpretative, projective and wildly schizophrenic prose-exposition of the narrative's central character, Victor Boullet. The text feels written with the sadistic glee of a ghostwriter that knows his subject is bound by contract to accept his version as final. Sophisticated montage technique is conflated with shameless plagiarism and downright theft.
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