Danilo Kiš

Danilo Kiš
File:Danilo kis.jpg
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer

Danilo Kiš (Serbian Cyrillic: Данило Киш) (February 22, 1935–October 15, 1989) was a Yugoslavian novelist, short story writer and poet who wrote in Serbo-Croatian. Kiš was influenced by Bruno Schulz, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges and Ivo Andrić, among other authors. His most famous works include A Tomb for Boris Davidovich and The Encyclopedia of the Dead.

Life and work

Danilo Kiš was born in Subotica, Danube Banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Serbia) the son of Eduard Kiš (Kis Ede), a Hungarian Jewish railway inspector, and Milica Kiš, a Montenegrin (born Dragićević) from Cetinje. His Jewish father was born in Austria-Hungary with a surname Kon, but changed it to Kis as part of Magyarization, a widely implemented practice at the time. During the Second World War, Danilo's father along with several other family members, were killed in various Nazi camps. His mother took him and his older sister Danica to Hungary for the duration of the war. After the end of the war, the family moved to Cetinje, Montenegro, Yugoslavia, where Kiš graduated from high school in 1954.

Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade, and graduated in 1958 as the first student to be awarded a degree in comparative literature. He was a prominent member of the Vidici magazine, where he worked until 1960. In 1962 he published his first two novels, Mansarda and Psalam 44. For his 1973 novel Peščanik ("Hourglass"), Kiš received the prestigious NIN Award, but returned it a few years later due to a political dispute.

During the following years, Kiš received a great number of national and international awards for his prose and poetry.

He spent most of his life in Belgrade until and last decade between Paris, France and Belgrade. Number of years he was working as a lecturer elsewhere in France.

Kiš was married to Mirjana Miočinović from 1962 to 1981. After their separation, he lived with Pascale Delpech until his early death from lung cancer in Paris.

A film based on Peščanik (Fövenyóra) directed by the Hungarian Szabolcs Tolnai is finished in 2008. [1]

In May 1989 with his friend, director Aleksandar Mandić, Kiš made the four-episode TV series Goli Život about lives of two Jewish women. The shooting took place in Israel and program was shown after his death, in the spring 1990. This is the last work of Danilo Kiš.

Kiš was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was due to win it, were it not for his death in 1989.

Bibliography

• Mansarda: satirična poema, 1962 (novel) (English title: "The Garret")
• Psalam 44, 1962 (novel)
• Bašta, pepeo, 1965 (novel) ("Garden, Ashes'")
• Rani jadi: za decu i osetljive, 1970 (short stories) ("Early Sorrows - For Children and Sensitive Readers")
• Peščanik, 1972 (novel) ("Hourglass")
• Po-etika, 1972 (essay)
• Po-etika, knjiga druga, 1974 (interviews)
• Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča: sedam poglavlja jedne zajedničke povesti, 1976 (short stories) ("A Tomb for Boris Davidovich")
• Čas anatomije, 1978 (novel)
• Noć i magla, 1983 (drama)
• Homo poeticus, 1983 (essays and interviews)
• Enciklopedija mrtvih, 1983 (short stories) ("The Encyclopedia of the Dead")
• Gorki talog iskustva, 1990 (interviews)
• Život, literatura, 1990 (interviews and essays)
• Pesme i prepevi, 1992 (poetry)
• Lauta i ožiljci, 1994 (short stories)
• Skladište, 1995 (texts)
• Varia, 1995 (essays, articles and short stories)
• Pesme, Elektra, 1995 (poetry and an adaptation from the drama "Elektra")

Goli Život 1989-90, host in documentary TV Series

English translations

• Garden, Ashes (1975, William J. Hannaher)
• Early Sorrows: For Children and Sensitive Readers (1998, Michael Henry Heim)
• Hourglass (1990, Ralph Manheim)
• A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (1978, Duška Mikić-Mitchell)
• The Encyclopedia of the Dead (1989, Michael Henry Heim)
• Homo Poeticus: Essays and Interviews (1995, Ralph Manheim, Michael Henry Heim, Francis Jones)
• Mansarda (2008, John K. Cox)

External links

• A dedicated website (in Serbian) [2]
• An essay by Aleksandar Hemon [3]
• An interview [4]
• An article on Kiš and Borges [5]
• Danilo Kiš' personal library on LibraryThing [6]
• "A Conversation with Danilo Kis" by Brendan Lemon, a 1984 interview [7]
• www.danilokis.org