On August 2, in a series entitled A Brief Survey of the Short Story in British daily The Guardian, the author, Chris Power, wrote about the famous Serbian writer Danilo Kiš (1935-1989). More from Tihana Pavicevic.
The series A Brief Survey of the Short Story has presented many famous writers, such as Giovanni Boccaccio, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ray Bradbury, etc. Danilo Kiš was described as one of the most important European writers after the Second World War and as one of the most precious minds of world literature. The author of the article lays special emphasis on the way Kiš treats reality and crude facts, which is why the world’s greatest literary critics compare him to James Joyce, Bruno Schulz or Franz Kafka, who had significant influence on Kis’s specific style of writing and way of thinking.
The article focuses on Kis’s story: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (1976). Danilo Kiš graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theatre. He is one of the most distinguished writers of modern Serbian liteature. His works include: The Garret (1962), Psalms 44 (1962), Garden, Ashes (1965), Early Sorrows (1970)), Hourglass (1972), A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (1976), The Encyclopedia of the Dead (1983). In his famous essay The Anatomy Lesson (1978), Danilo Kiš divided the short story into two eras: "pre-Borges and post-Borges.", writes Chris Power, the author of the Guardian article. He further writes: Just as Borges's stories thrive in the narrow strip dividing fact from fantasy, so does Kiš's work find an abnormal power in attempting to capture reality by doctoring the documentary truth.