The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo Kiš
Anyone who has once walked through the writing labyrinths of Danilo Kiš experiences an incredible reading proficiency and is aware that will constantly return to the greatest author from the Balkans, the magician of European postmodern literature.
“History is written by the winners. Traditions are woven by the people. Writers fantasize. Only death is certain.” - Danilo Kiš
Danilo Kiš's last work The Encyclopedia of the Dead was published in 1983. Critics call this work “the farewell fugue of the literary Mozart”. In a way, yes, the Encyclopedia... can be considered as the completion of one of its eternal themes - death and the transience of life in this world. As a master of pastiche (which he himself says is the only literary practice from Sumerian literature onwards) Kiš reconstructs history, real events, personal memories into the world of Old Testament legends, Qur'anic stories, allegorical texts centered on death. topic of literature in general. As in his most famous work, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, Kiš as a writer wants to compete with the reader; it has neither fable nor afabulation, the narrative flows by itself, creating a multidimensional structure, a labyrinth that the reader must go through alone.
A total of nine stories (the title is from the third story) that make up this book are a summary of human destinies, their mental states, attitudes towards their own bodies, views of the world and God, doubts about the existence of other worlds, moral norms and the inevitable end. But the Encyclopedia... although in the title it carries death is not a dark and pessimistic vision of Kiš, on the contrary, it permeates love (in any form) as the only valuable human feeling; Eros as an eternal companion of Thanatos.
