A mysterious visitor comes to see three desperate human beings an astronomerin his prison cell the night before his execution for the ultimate heresy apaleoling... » 

A mysterious visitor comes to see three desperate human beings an astronomerin his prison cell the night before his execution for the ultimate heresy apaleolinguist with a wasted life behind her who has been forgotten by everybodyin her dusty basement office an old watchmaker with a dark painful spot inhis past that has haunted him for decades. The visitor has a unique butambiguous timegift for each one of them. His true identity is known only by anartist locked up in her asylum atelier.In TimeGifts Zoran Zivkovic weaves these encounters around philosophicalquestions at the core of human existence. The stranger appears in the cell ofthe astronomer and through a glance at the future offers the prisoner achoice repentance of his scientific theories and physical survival or theimmortality granted one who dies for his beliefs. The stranger next visits apaleolinguist who has been forgotten by her university and who despairs of everknowing the validity of her theories until given a chance at time travel.Next the stranger visits a simple watchmaker who works literally at the centerof time yet has never pondered its possibilities. The aged man is offered therarest of gifts a second chance but at a terrible price. In the finalchapter the true nature of the visitor is revealed by an insane artist butwho would believe an artist in this world even if she were not insane?Provocative dizzying in its implications TimeGifts is a meditation on thenature of time as well as on the nature of the human beings at its mercy. «