As the collection's title suggests, time's passage is the "fil rouge" of these s
tories. All of Tabucchi's characters struggle to find routes of escape from a pr
esent that is hard to bear, and from places in which political events have had d
eeply personal ramifications for their own lives.
Each of the nine stories in
Time Ages in a Hurry is an imaginative inquiry into something hidden or disguise
d, which can be uncovered not by reason but only by feeling and intuition, by wh
at isn't said. Disquieted and disoriented yet utterly human in their loves and f
ears, the characters in these vibrant and often playful stories suffer from what
Tabucchi once referred to as a "corrupted relationship with history." Each prot
agonist must confront phantoms from the past, misguided or false beliefs, and th
e deepest puzzles of identity--and each in his or her own way ends up experienci
ng "an infinite sense of liberation, as when finally we understand something we'
d known all along and didn't want to know."
