The carved circular void opens the book like an excavated chamber, its layered pages forming a sediment of stories—echoing Kiš’s great archive of the forgotten. The delicate black illustrations encircling the cut suggest both ornament and omen: eyes, plants, and small symbolic creatures that evoke the book’s interplay between myth, memory, and the uncanny.

By hollowing out the center, the work creates a silent core—an absence that feels like a presence—mirroring the way Kiš gathers countless lives yet leaves their deepest truths unknowable. It becomes a miniature “encyclopedia” in itself, where reality and imagination coil tightly together, and where what’s missing speaks as loudly as what remains.