Psalm 44

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.

The Attic

The AtticBildungsroman

Written between 1980 and 1986, the six stories that constitute (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 Ödön von Horváth and Endre Ady (“The Stateless”), by the Yugoslavian Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić (“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.