Alistair Vance
Listen to The Architecture of Absence by Alistair Vance as a bilingual audiobook with synchronized read-along text in English and Slovak.
For forty years, Julian had been a voracious curator of the redundant. His previous townhome in Edinburgh was an impenetrable labyrinth of brass astrolabes, brittle botanical folios, and tarnished silver snuffboxes. Every creaking floorboard had groaned beneath the weight of accumulated decades, each object a frantic attempt to tether his elusive identity to the material plane. He had defined his very soul by the exquisite clutter he possessed, convinced that to own an artifact was to absorb its history. Yet when the rust-red moving van departed from his new sanctuary on the windswept cliffs of Cornwall, the spacious rooms remained unburdened. The residence was an understated marvel of reclaimed cedar timber, smoothed slate tiles, and vast expanses of triple-glazed glass facing the turbulent Atlantic Ocean. High ceilings trapped the golden evening light, casting long, unblemished shadows across bare floorboards. A lone trunk sat in the center of the expansive foyer, its brass latches gleaming under the recessed lighting. Outside, free-roaming red squirrels darted through the canopy of maritime pines, unbothered by human presence.