[1] The novel takes the form of a collection of dreamlike, poetic short stories that reflect on the death of the narrator's father, as well as life in the modest Jewish quarter of Drohobycz, the provincial town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire where Schulz was born.

The hourglass of the title refers to the use of this object as a symbol in obituaries and death notices among the Poles.

Even the pretty, young Polish maid Adela has gone and been replaced by Genya, "anemic, pale, and boneless,…and so absent-minded that she sometimes made a white sauce from old letters and invoices."

Father's response is to turn himself first into wallpaper, then a piece of clothing, and finally into a big crablike insect who — unlike Kafka's passive victim — runs around the house, searching endlessly for something.

One day, however, she must have managed because Father appears at lunch, as the main course, after which he escapes the table, never to be seen again.