Secrets and Conscience. They are lovers or strangers – the liked ones, in any case, the characters of Lydia Mischkulnig: mother and daughter, married couple, lovers, unknowns. They encounter each other in newly furnished apartments, in restaurants, in circles of chairs, and in hourly hotels, performing a dance of relationships between closeness and alienation, between the obvious and the unspoken in a politically shaped everyday life. They all share a deep longing for stability in unstable times, living in fear and worry, feeling alienated from modern society. Their promises dissolve as soon as smoldering secrets and manipulations are revealed. Lydia Mischkulnig is a master of the short form and curious events. With pleasure, she penetrates through the ceiling of conformity in her stories and reveals the abysses of her characters with light-footed linguistic artistry. In doing so, she creates an original panopticon of the liked ones, who are profoundly lovable in their quirky passions.