Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is the English title of Sanatorium Pod Klepsydra, a novel by the Polish writer and painter Bruno Schulz, published in 1937. The novel takes the form of a collection of dreamlike, poetic short stories that reflect on the death of the narrator's father, as well as life in the modest Jewish quarter of Drohobycz, the provincial town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire where Schulz was born. The hourglass of the title refers to the use of this object as a symbol in obituaries and death notices among the Poles. -Father's Last Escape, - the concluding story of...

Collected Stories is an authoritative new translation of the complete fiction of Bruno Schulz, whose work has influenced writers as various as Salman Rushdie, Cynthia Ozick, Jonathan Safran Foer, Philip Roth, Danilo Kis, and Roberto Bolano.

Schulz's prose is renowned for its originality. Set largely in a fictional counterpart of his hometown of Drohobycz, his stories merge the real and the surreal. The most ordinary objects--the wind, an article of clothing, a plate of fish--can suddenly appear unfathomably mysterious and capable of illuminating profound truths. As "Father," one...