For the Sirkačot – The Peeper of Prokopiev, nostalgia is inseparable from the erotic. Even as a schoolboy, joining in singing the National Anthem for Tito, the protagonist is more deeply affected by personal experience than public history. The middle-aged protagonist who longs for Jana had already longed for and lost his mother Maria decades earlier. And desire, in this novel, is always intimately involved with the lack of something. Either the protagonist achieves orgasm too soon, or he is balked of the chance, or else he is sustained in a state of arousal by inability to attain the object of his desire. ”The Peeper” is subtile, resonant study of sexuality implicates its every reader in a labyrinth, wit and high-octane erotics. It is a game with high stakes, both artistic and human: and it is of this dangerous game that Aleksandar Prokopiev has emerged as the indisputable master.
“The Peeper” has been translated in Italian (two editions), Serbian and Bulgarian.