Wars do not end, but rather accumulate and, with them, forced movements of people: exiles, refugees, displaced persons, they can be called in many ways, but they are the non-fatal victims. When, among these exiles, there are writers, they usually leave texts tinged with sadness or melancholy for the lost homeland. What is not so common is that the texts take on a literary form close to fantasy, and I say close only because Desaparèixer, this perfectly geared nouvelle, with its feet in a Europe that has lost its identity and its head in a phantasmagoric world, has vanishing points that escape the realist corset. The oscillation between realism and fantasy makes one think of an acrobat walking a tightrope over European cities, train stations, impersonal hotel rooms, escape rooms, and circus rings to a point of no return from which one's own identity is completely interchangeable. As Joseph Roth said: "What is a man without papers? Less than a paper without men!"

Like the Russian writer Maria Stepanova, Maksim Ossipov (Moscow, 1963) would never have imagined that he would end up in exile. "I never would have thought that I would be teaching Russian literature in English in Amsterdam, but here I am," he explained in a interview on the ARAAuthor of short story collections such as The cry of the domestic bird (Club Editor, 2016), Rock, paper, scissors (Club Editor, 2022), and Kilometer 101 (Asteroid Books), Ossipov packed his bags and left the country shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began. In Russia, Ossipov was a cardiologist. In exile, he lives between Amsterdam and Berlin, writing and speaking about literature. He has just published a new book of short stories, After Eternity (Libros del Asteroide, 2026), translated into Spanish by Alejandro Ariel González. From his previous life in Russia, Osipov longs for his home, his parents' graves, his work as a doctor, and some friends. And above all, the feeling of being understood.