The title corresponds to the reality: a writer’s afternoon holed up in his house and in his solitude, takes a walk down the street and observes, silently, what happens around him. The writer is convinced that he has lost his speech and in fact, he does not say a word in the whole narrative, but observes with interest and listens to the people who cross his path, some who recognise him in admiration as a writer and tell him things. The tale culminates with a meeting with his translator and a confession from the author: already in the act of isolating myself and making my life apart in order to be able to write I acknowledge my defeat as a person affiliated to society; I excluded myself from others for the rest of my days. And even though I’m still sitting here until the end, among people, and they greet me, hug me and let me in on their secrets, I’ll never be one of them.
The text reflects the loneliness of the writer really well and to a certain aspect, his sense of estrangement from the world around him. The writer is sober, concise and writes in third person which contributes to the message of the book. The author has recently received the Nobel Prize for Literature 2019 for an extensive work.