And at a mere two minutes, the mordant hilarity and conceptual perfection of Dutch mortality study A Single Life exceeds what many films achieve in 90 or more.
As uncomfortable as that experience was, still more troubling was his family's reaction to the first volume, a mordant reflection on the ignominious demise of Knausgaard's father.
That monument was a tribute to its most famous son, the 10th-century blind poet al-Ma'arri, an illustrious figure in the long Arab tradition of mordant sceptics to which Adunis belongs.Pessimism about where the Arab world is going is understandable, especially in view of what is happening in Syria.
On Stalham high street, locals grumble, businesses such as a greengrocer, fishmonger, bakery, butcher and a convenience store have closed, to be replaced by charity shops, Chinese takeaways and (prompting mordant jokes) a funeral parlour.
Even second-hand, the mordant, irreverent lyrics of Lou Reed brought comfort and hope.Life inside Czechoslovakia of the "normalisation" era might seem frozen, impossibly isolated from the cultural mainstream of the West.
He showed himself a mordant editorialist with far-reaching influence.
"Allusions in a Landscape" is a mordant tale about a white suburban housewife and a wacher, a Jewish watcher-over of the dead.
This is analytical history at its mordant best.
Now a Portuguese wit suggests rebranding the whole country as Poortugal.Amid furious protests and thundering editorials, such mordant humour was a restrained response to the draft 2013 budget that Vítor Gaspar, the finance minister, presented on October 15th.
The worst Soviet cars were almost comical: when the Oka was launched in 1987, Mr Siegelbaum notes, "like the Zaporozhets [its predecessor], with which it shared a diminutive size and lack of safety features…it quickly became the subject of horrifying stories and mordant humour".
Yet Ms Heti's mordant take on modernity encourages introspection.
