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21st out of 132 books
—
75 voters
Encyclopedia of the Dead
In these stories Kis depicts human relationships, encounters, landscapes -- the multitude of details that make up a human life.
Paperback, 201 pages
Published
January 7th 1998
by Northwestern University Press
(first published January 1st 197)
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This book, like Mahler's Symphony no. 9, has a central theme of the dead. And, also like Mahler's Symphony, raises many questions, but leave to the reader(listener) to find the answers for himself, since there is no unique and unified approach on solving the problem of death and its overcoming. In this precious book we see nine ways of trying to overcome the death, which are told through nine stories. They raise many unpleasant questions, and the basic one is: Can a human being achieve the immor...more
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November 1, 2012 All Saints' Day. Death looks very much like the ending of a book. It is inevitable, inescapable, final, often unpredictable yet necessary and common to all. Each human life that ends is like a book that has been read, and was loved, and is kept in at least one other person's memory. For a book, its author or its first reader; for a person, his/her mother or someone who had loved him/her most.
All Saints' Day is a celebration and commemoration of sequels, or the possibility thereo...more
All Saints' Day is a celebration and commemoration of sequels, or the possibility thereo...more
Es una maravilla, un libro bien contado y bien escrito, pero confieso que demasiado para mi en este momento. Lo leí por partes, acabé brincando gran parte, supongo que estoy un poco emocional, y este libro es duro como pocos. Quizás en algun momento lo vuelva a intentar. No me molesta que se hable de la muerte, lo que ahora no se si puedo manejar, es que la muerte sea tan importante.
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I picked up this short story collection because it's mentioned in Dubravka Ugresic's "Museum of Unconditional Surrender." Although it had its moments, I think I'm just going to stick to Ugresic herself, who is a brilliant novelist and essayist if you haven't read her yet. For "Encyclopedia" I would actually recommend reading the handy postscript at the back before any of the stories--they shed a lot of light on ones which are rambling and/or confusing such as "The Legend of the Sleepers" and "Th...more
I love Borges and after I exhausted his books, I went looking for other authors who were influenced by him. Danilo Kis came up near the top of the list, so I picked up "Encyclopedia of The Dead", his book of short stories. And indeed, Kis' subjects are Borgesian: gnostic heretics, infinite encyclopedias, men condemned by dictators, Koranic legends, reviews of imaginary books. In many ways, Kis is a better writer than Borges— the stories have the mournful lyricism of Milan Kundera at his best. Bu...more
If for whatever reason you haven't read anything by Danilo Kis yet, I'm gonna go ahead and say "Do so as soon as possible." Jewish guy from what was Yugoslavia at the time, wrote in Serbo-Croatian, and as good as anybody you'd care to name. Really just top shelf. You can start anywhere because all the books are good. This is stories, loosely linked by the theme of death. Kis's three big topics are death, childhood, and the Holocaust, and yeahyeah, heavy stuff, and generally pretty depressing but...more
I had high hopes for this collection of stories I've been holding onto for a few years now. Truthfully, I made it through three-quarters of the collection and found myself left with a sense of unemotional, flavorless philosophizing. That's not to say that philosophical writing doesn't have it's place, but I read for emotional resonance, so unless the intellectual lifting is pretty damn impressive, I'm probably going to get bored, which I did. The title story and "The Mirror of the Unknown" were...more
I’ve not previously read Mr Kis’s work and I was not sure what to expect. I read this collection in translation (by Michael Henry Heim). This was the first book I could obtain, and I was totally swept up in the beauty of the prose from beginning to end. This collection of nine stories touches on a number of facets of life: relationships, encounters and experiences. Each is unique. Each illustrates a different aspect of existence, including questioning the notion of divine order.
‘Everything a liv...more
May 30, 2012
Bennievermeer
added it
For fans of the vertiginous fictions of Borges, the short story collection 'The Encyclopedia of the Dead' by Serbian writer Danilo Kiš is worth checking out. Kiš, greatly influenced by Borges, uses the same dense intertextuality and metaphysical themes, though tinged with a typical Balkan-style magical realism that is also found in Pavić.
Read my review: http://www.brnrd.net/blog/archive/200...
Read my review: http://www.brnrd.net/blog/archive/200...
This is beautifully written, but I didn't feel it as engaging as his other book I recently read: A Tomb for Davidovich. There is a postscript in this book which is very helpful, because many of the stories are obscure and clearly referring to some history which I was ignorant of, the postscript explains much of this. I do recommend the book because of the beauty of the language.
A pretty good set of short stories, albeit not quite what I was looking for. I was hoping for a more sustained, interesting look at death, which this book does not contain, though many of the stories deal with death. There are a lot of religious themes and a definite hint of Borges (especially in "The Conspiracy" or "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" which have intriguing situations) to these "metaphysical" stories. The stories about fictional books and authors were the best ones, and some of the sh...more
Brilliant brilliant brilliant. A global range of perfect stories, each odd and striking in its own tragic way. It riffs through so many different mythologies from Eastern Euro fables to the Qur'an to sailor tales of Hamburg and the Kabbalah and Mormons and Communism. This book awes me with every reread.
En el mejor estilo que ya nos había heredado Borges, leemos a Danilo Kis disfrutando cada frase y oración que construye, envolviéndonos en un mundo que a la vez que es fantástico y que nos mantiene con los pies en la tierra. No es evasión, es goce puro. Reconocer en leyendas y citas de obras que no nos son accesibles la familiaridad con que las distintas corrientes de pensamiento proyectan líneas que sabemos que se tocan, o que lo hicieron, y otras a las que no les falta gran cosa para hacerlo....more
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Lyrically written, fantastic, deeply allegorical set of stories - some of them worked much better for me than others, but I found that reading the author's notes at the end helped bolster my appreciation for the collection as a whole by adding some valuable additional context...
N-am abandonat-o dintr-un singur motiv: am primit-o de la cineva drag (cu tot cu recomandări).
Pînă la urmă, n-a fost chiar atît de rău. Din fericire, e o colecție de povestiri, unele mai cu sens (pentru mine) decît altele.
Autorul e preocupat de supranatural, moarte și tot soiul de întîmplări dubioase-obscure-metafizice (culese din ziare/cărți și alte lecturi asemenea) și le rescrie într-o manieră pseudojurnalistică sau, mai bine zis, în maniera originalului din care și-a „împrumutat” ideea.
O s...more
Pînă la urmă, n-a fost chiar atît de rău. Din fericire, e o colecție de povestiri, unele mai cu sens (pentru mine) decît altele.
Autorul e preocupat de supranatural, moarte și tot soiul de întîmplări dubioase-obscure-metafizice (culese din ziare/cărți și alte lecturi asemenea) și le rescrie într-o manieră pseudojurnalistică sau, mai bine zis, în maniera originalului din care și-a „împrumutat” ideea.
O s...more
A little uneven, as with most collections of short stories. I loved "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" and "The Book of Kings and Fools" - of course I love the two about imaginary books. There were a few stories that were adaptations of Biblical stories and a story from the Koran. I found those very boring. I think now I've read more adaptations of the Bible than the Bible itself, and I don't have much context to put them into. But the good in this book is excellent, and the whole thing is worth rea...more
An interesting book and an interesting fact that Daniel said that he knew about writing a book like this will not go unpunished.
Oct 15, 2012
Janna
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
stories-and-collections
3.5 - I loved most of the themes, a few of the stories, and a lot of the gorgeous, inventive sentences, but I got pretty sick of the underwhelming, yet long Borgesian fake-bibliography-as-story stories (and I am into Borges). The author's note in the back of the book was one of my favorite things to read; it gave some background info & made everything richer/more satisfying. Unfortunately, reading the note first would have given away some of the plots, but I'm inclined to think it would have...more
alcuni di questi racconti sono davvero stupendi
fantastic, deeply allegorical set of stories.....
It's hard at first to get in to his writing, but once you're in, you're really in. It's like a trance, his imagery is so evocative, ethereal. Esp. The Legend of the Sleepers. I was reading it sitting in a patch of sunlight coming in through the window, but felt the cold damp of the cave most acutely, and then the redeeming warmth of the sun as the sleepers were carried out.
The title story, too, was very poignant. He captures the fragility and beauty, the depth of the little things that go to mak...more
The title story, too, was very poignant. He captures the fragility and beauty, the depth of the little things that go to mak...more
Odlične priče, "Legenda o spavačima" je vjerojatno nešto najpoetičnije i najdivnije što sam ikad pročitala, doslovno su mi trnci prolazili po tijelu.
Amazing, fantastic book...
Not finished...
i really liked the first 7 stories. the last 2 not so much.
May 17, 2007
Jared Colley
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Fans of Borges ans such
Shelves:
fiction
Danilo Kis is a Yugoslavian writer; I read this collection of stories for a class a couple years ago and was thoroughly impressed. Imagine Borges as an Eastern European writer. The self-conscious, meta-fictional style is here, but the stories are resourcing a completely different historical experience - namely one of Eastern Europe in the tumultuous 20th century. This is a great reading experience; I enthusiastically recommend it.
Son nueve relatos. Algunos no me gustan (los de tema muy fabuloso), otros están muy bien (entre ellos el que da título al libro) y dos ("El libro de los reyes y de los tontos", "Sellos rojos con la efigie de Lenin") me parecen geniales. Kis asalta un territorio político particularmente ominoso y deja unas cuantas calaveras de regalo: corrosivas, delicadas, secretas.
Quite good and frequently interesting. I just wish every short story author wasn't compared to Borges.
A good grouping of short stories, almost all of which are thought-provoking and well-told. I wrote a paper on this one in my postmodernism class.
Enjoyed the short stories: 'Encyclopedia of the Dead', 'The Mirror of the Unknown' and 'Red Stamps with Lenin's Picture'.
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Danilo Kiš was born in Subotica, Danube Banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the son of Eduard Kiš (Kis Ede), a Hungarian Jewish railway inspector, and Milica Kiš (born Dragićević) from Cetinje, Montenegro. During the Second World War, he lost his father and several other family members, who died in various Nazi camps. His mother took him and his older sister Danica to Hungary for the duration of the...more
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“Istoriju pišu pobednici. Predanja ispreda puk. Književnici fantaziraju. Izvesna je samo smrt.”
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“U svakom mom retku, u svakoj mojoj reči, u svakoj tački nalaziš se i ti, kao polen.”
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