The Encyclopedia of the Dead

I urge you to read this reissued collection from a writer who reinvented and invigorated the short story...[The title story] is one of the most moving I have ever read, a testament to both the power and the weakness of literature and human memory... He is one of those writers you feel is on your side. In short, I cannot recommend this book highly enough, or urge it on you more strongly

Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

Kis is woefully undervalued. He belongs at the centre of European literature, not on its fringes. . .It is past time for Kis's rediscovery.

New Statesman

Compulsively readable

Daily Telegraph

Kiš is one of the great European writers of the post-war period

Guardian

Fantasy chases reality and reality chases fantasy. Pirandello and Borges are not far away. But these names are intended as approximate references. Kiš is a new, original writer

Leonardo Sciascia, Times Literary Supplement

In The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Danilo Kiš offers a vision that expands the domain of life at the expense of that of death. These stories present that vision with a journalist's precision, with a taxidermist's tactile knowledge of era and realm, with the tenacity of a true son of the century

Joseph Brodsky

Intense and exotic, his mysteries hint at unspeakable secrets that remain forever beyond the story-teller's grasp

Boyd Tonkin

This translation, by Michael Henry Heim, is superb

Independent

The Encyclopedia of the Dead is a book of wonders, product of a vivid imagination that is yet a model of narrative restraint

RTE