Danilo Kis - Böcker

An entrancing, otherworldly collection of short stories from one of Europe's most accomplished 20th century writers, new to Penguin Modern ClassicsA counter-prophet attempts the impossible to prove his power; a girl sees the hideous fate of her sisters and father in a mirror bought from a gypsy; the death of a prostitute causes an unanticipated uprising; and the lives of every ordinary person since 1789 are recreated in the almighty Encyclopedia of the Dead. These stories about love and death, truth and lies, myth and reality range across many epochs and settings. Brilliantly combining fact and fiction, epic and miniature, horror and comedy, this was Danilo Kiš final work, published in Serbo-Croatian in 1983.Kiš is one of the great European writers of the post-war period - GuardianCompulsively readable - Daily Telegraph Fantasy chases reality and reality chases fantasy. Pirandello and Borges are not far away. But these names are intended as approximate references. Kiš is a new, original writer - Times Literary Supplement Intense and exotic, his mysteries hint at unspeakable secrets that remain forever beyond the story-teller's grasp - Boyd TonkinDanilo Kiš was born in the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1935. After an unsettled childhood during the Second World War, in which several of his family members were killed, Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade where he lived for most of his adult life. He wrote novels, short stories and poetry and went on to receive the prestigious NIN Award for his novel Pešcanik. He died in Paris in 1989.Mark Thompson is a British historian. His published work includes Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kiš.

Originally published in Belgrade in 1969 and never before translated into English, Early Sorrows is a stunning group of linked stories that memorialize Danilo Kis’s childhood. Kis, a writer of incomparable originality and eloquence, famous for his books The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Hourglass, and A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, was born in 1935 in Subotica, Yugoslavia, near the Hungarian border. “Back and forth over this land, during Danilo Kis’s childhood, armies and ideologies washed with the brutal regularity of surf,” William Gass noted in The New York Review of Books. “As a small boy and a Jew, in such circumstances, he was naturally surrounded by death and lies.” All of the works of Danilo Kis show the crucial importance of his childhood experiences, but it is Early Sorrows that goes to the wellspring of his first bereavements. The twenty pieces that make up Early Sorrows strike various tones––from dreamy pastorals to exercises in horror. Kis’s ingenuity, lyricism, and tonal subtlety are caught in all their luster by Michael Henry Heim. 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.

Composed of seven dark tales, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich presents variations on the theme of political and social self-destruction throughout Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The characters in these stories are caught in a world of political hypocrisy, which ultimately leads to death, their common fate. Although the stories Kis tells are based on historical events, the beauty and precision of his prose elevates these ostensibly true stories into works of literary art that transcend the politics of their time.

Written between 1980 and 1986, the six stories that constitute "The Lute and the Scars" (as well as an untitled piece by the author, included here as "A and B") were transcribed from the manuscripts left by Danilo Kiš following his death in 1989. Like the title story, many of these texts are autobiographical. Others resurrect protagonists belonging to Kiš's fellow Central European novelists, allowing readers to identify, perhaps, depending on the level of obfuscation, fantasy, and historical accuracy, figures dreamed up by ?d?n von Horv?th and Endre Ady ("The Stateless"), by the Yugoslavian Nobel laureate Ivo Andric ("Debt"), and by Piotr Rawicz.Against a background of oppressive regimes and political exile, readers will find that the never-ending debate between death and writing continues unabated in these stories--death as allegory or as a voluntary symbolic act, and writing as the one impregnable defense, writing as the only possible means of survival.

"Psalm 44" is the last major work of fiction by Danilo Kiš to be translated into English, and his only novel dealing explicitly with Auschwitz (where his own father died). Written when he was only twenty-five, before embarking on the masterpieces that would make him an integral figure in twentieth-century letters, Psalm 44 shows Kiš at his most lyrical and unguarded, demonstrating that even in "the place of dragons... covered with the shadow of death," there can still be poetry. Featuring characters based on actual inmates and warders--including the abominable Dr. Mengele--"Psalm 44" is a baring of many of the themes, patterns, and preoccupations Kiš would return to in future, albeit never with the same starkness or immediacy.

För första gången på svenska utkommer nu Danilo Kis debutroman Vindskyffet. < Under takbjälkarna i ett vindskyffe i Belgrad lever Orfeus. Väggarna täcks med bilder av urtidsdjur och från grekiska mytologin. Under en glaskupa på golvet skyddar Orfeus sina favoritböcker från möss och kackerlackor. Det är i sitt vindskyffe som han med vännen Igor och förälskelsen Eurydike diskuterar konst, litteratur, filosofi och kärlek och det är här han skriver en berättelse om det bohemiska livet i Belgrad med ett sprakande persongalleri, en berättelse vars likheter med den vi läser blir allt större. Vindskyffet är såväl en poetisk kärleksroman som en berättelse om en författares kreativa process och jakt på autencitet, att kunna balansera liv och text. En liten satirisk och medryckande bohemisk bildningsroman som tar ut riktningen för Kis storslagna författarskap med ett vindlande och medryckande språk fyllt av referenser till litteraturhistorien och sitt eget berättande. Danilo Kis föddes 1935 i Subotica i dåvarande Kungariket Jugoslavien och avled 1989 i Paris. Kis var verksam som författare, översättare, regissör och var till stor del av sitt liv verksam i Frankrike. Som jude med serbisk och ungersk härkomst återfinns ofta ett språkligt sökande i hans litteratur och en frångång från kronologin, inspirerad inte minst av Borges och Bruno Schulz.