Sisyphus, Ariadne, Morpheus, Charon, the Minotaur – in Katharina Hacker’s delicate and intelligent short stories, the figures of ancient mythology crop up in our times. There, they seem rather lost: Sisyphus rolls his stone around a shabby hotel room, Ariadne waits at a bus stop as if it were the beach at Naxos, and the Minotaur wanders helpless and afraid through the labyrinth of modern-day streets and underground lines. They are all undead and unhoused in new, unexpected and sometimes comical settings – in a no-man’s land made of time. Do we still recognise the legendary figures? Do we understand what they’ve been trying to tell us for two thousand years?
