"Andreas Ban, the protagonist of Belladonna, failed in his suicide attempt and has stayed on to struggle with ghosts past and present. Mercilessly, fearlessly, he continues to dissect society and his environment; eschewing all favours, he is interested only in the truth. He does not shrink from delving into his own inner world, his own wounds, but equally he exposes the evils and hidden secrets of others. Still cynical, still on the margins, Andreas Ban records the words of a precariat intellectual of the present day, who has lived through a better past. The narrator of Dasa Drndic 's latest novel EEG plays his own game of chess, with black figures. Although he knows he cannot win, he persists in exposing himself to risk because the game is all that truly interests him. Whether in Rovinj, Rijeka, Zagreb, Belgrade, Paris, Tuscany, Riga or Tirana, Ban tells the stories of those who themselves could not, dared not or did not wish to tell them."--