Danilo Kiš

Early Sorrows centers on Andreas Sam, a highly intelligent boy whose life at first seems secure. His mother and sister dote on him; he excels at school; when he is hired out as a cowherd to help with the family's finances, he reads the day away in the company of his best friend, the dog. He can only sense that terrible things may be going on in the world. Soon soldiers are marching down the road, and then one day, many people from the village are herded together and taken away, among them, his father, the dreamer.

The fictional masterpieces of the great Yugoslav writer Danilo Kis-Hourglass: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich: Garden, Ashes; and The Encyclopedia of the Dead - established him as a figure of incomparable originality and eloquence in the spectrum of contemporary European literature. With this posthumous selection from his non-fiction made by Susan Sontag, who was a friend of Kis, the English-language reader will be able to admire an equally original, more polemical aspect of Kis's genius. Here is Kis on nationalism as kitsch and collective paranoia, on the dilemmas of a Central European identity, on the dangers of censorship, on literature's struggle against banality, as well as on writers as different as Nabokov and Sade.

"Garden, Ashes is the account of Andi Scham's childhood during World War II, as his Jewish family traverses Eastern Europe to escape persecution. As the family moves from house to house the novel focuses on Andi's relationship with his father. He recounts the endless hours his father poured into the creation of the all-inclusive third edition of the Bus, Ship, Rail, and Air Travel Guide, the bizarre sermons he delivered to his befuddled family, and his eventual disappearance and assumed death at Auschwitz. Rather than dwelling on the apocalyptic events fueling this family's story, Kis focuses on specific details of life during this period, constructing a personal account of a future artist growing up under the shadow of the Nazis in a world capable of containing a person as unique as his father."--Jacket.

Written between 1980 and 1986, the stories in The Lute and the Scars were transcribed from the manuscripts left by Danilo Kis following his death in 1989. Many are autobiographical. Others resurrect protagonists belonging to Kis's fellow Central European novelists.

ANTOLOGIJA

Set in Belgrade "The Attic" explores the relationship of a young man, known only as Orpheus, to the art of writing: it also tracks his relationship with a colorful cast of characters. This is an account of one young man's quest to find a way to balance his life, his loves, and his art.

This volume of translations represents the entire dramatic and cinematic ouevre of the Yugoslav writer Danilo Kis (1935, Subotica, Yugoslavia - 1989, Paris). Coming from a multicultural background, Kis was a living antipode to the emerging nationalisms of the late 20th century. The seven dramas and screenplays are accompanied by a historical introduction by the translator. Written in mid-career, the themes of these seven works vary widely. Two address classical themes, one is a dramatization Kis's own A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, and the others, explore the Holocaust and first decades of socialism in Tito's Yugoslavia and Hungary. What they have in common is Kis's ear for precise language, narrative experimentation, and his eye for the personal devastation of individuals in communist and fascist systems. Many consider A Wooden Trunk for Thomas Wolfe to be his finest play; it is the chronicle of the intense relationship of two men, one broken by Hitler's death camps and the other by Stalinism, as they wrestle with their own infirmities and need for remembrance. Night and Fog originates in the same milieu - the multicultural region between Belgrade and Szeged - as Kis's other autobiographical writings; a young narrator tracks his childhood teachers and their sparring over contested memories transitions slowly from nostalgia to bitter awareness. The Mechanical Lions is a must for anyone familiar with Kis's take on the Soviet purges of the 1930s; it is written with vintage Kis wryness, spareness, and emotional force. It bounces around through time and place to tell the story of the Soviet purges in the 1930s, and honor and historical truth join Old Bolsheviks and international activists on the NKVD's hit list.