{"product_id":"birth-certificate-the-story-of-danilo-kis-hardback-9780801448881","title":"Birth Certificate; The Story of Danilo Kis (Hardback) 9780801448881","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eBirth Certificate\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eThe Story of Danilo Kis\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eMark Thompson (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780801448881\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 15 February 2013\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e376 pages, 27 halftones, 1 map, 1 line drawing - 27 Halftones, black and white\u003cbr\u003e25.4 x 17.8 x 1.5 cm, 0.907 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHow can one restore justice to Danilo Kiš? That is the task for Kiš's future reader – and one way to begin, now that this reader has Mark Thompson's comprehensive, erudite and stylish new biography, is to rehearse the basic outline of Kiš's life and works.... [Thompson's] book is also remarkable for its attention to the detail of Kiš's fiction. This is a great biography of the work as much as the life.\u003c\/p\u003e - Adam Thirlwell (Times Literary Supplement) \u003cp\u003eMark Thompson's biography of Danilo Kiš takes its cue from \u003ci\u003eHourglass\u003c\/i\u003e... Thompson interrogates Kiš's rather misleading autobiographical fragment, 'Birth Certificate,' phrase by phrase, to generate an exemplary account of his life and works.... Thompson is more than equal to these tasks... I can hardly speak too highly of this biography. Its organization is impeccable: a great deal of information must be imparted to make Kiš's circumstances clear, and this is done in relatively short chapters with impeccable lucidity and many helpful cross-references.... This is a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to the life and work of Danilo Kiš and an excellent book in its own right.\u003c\/p\u003e - Chris Miller (PN Review) \u003cp\u003eWith Thompson's exhilarating feat of biography and literary criticism, English readers can finally gain an introduction to the cerebral and experimental works of Yugoslavian poet, novelist, and playwright Danilo Kis.... Thompson, a graceful writer and storyteller in his own right, restores Kis to his rightful place in the pantheon of 20th-century writers in a biography that should appeal to any reader interested in contemporary world literature.\u003c\/p\u003e (Publishers Weekly) \u003cp\u003e\"Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš 1935-1989 may not be well-known to American-Jewish readers, but this ambitious biography at least offers a context for understanding Kiš's very real contributions to Jewish\/Serbo-Croatian letters....Anyone interested in modern Eastern European literature, particularly the role of Jewish writers, will find this biography important reading.\"–Jewish Book Council\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEven if I'm on the jury or the shortlist I deprecate literary prizes because they tend to endorse current tastes. This year, however, the Shannon Prize (which my university awards annually for the best work on an aspect of European culture) went to one of the most impressive, innovative, sensitive biographies I have ever read. Mark Thompson's\u003ci\u003eBirth Certificate\u003c\/i\u003e(Cornell) conjures, daringly and deftly, the Montenegrin iconoclast, Danilo Kiš, and the political environment he inhabited – Communist, nationalist, cruel, distasteful, and yet navigable by a writer of genius. Thompson builds his picture from fragments of a demolished world with unfailing command of the evidence and unflagging fidelity to a moral stance as challenging as uncompromising as Kiš's own.\u003c\/p\u003e - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Times Literary Supplement \"Books of the Year\") \u003cp\u003eBritish writer Thompson pays homage to one of the 20th century's most innovative and difficult writers in the very form of this immense autobiography that simultaneously moonlights as an attempt to rekindle interest in Kis's work and as a cultural history of Jews in south central Europe... he ultimately succeeds brilliantly by using this patchwork approach to put Kis and his works into a wide range of contexts. Given that translations of Kis's work are vanishing from print, this study makes a compelling plea to reverse that trend. Summing Up: Recommended.\u003c\/p\u003e (Choice) \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBirth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kis\u003c\/i\u003e by British historian Mark Thompson is a brilliant guide to the biography of the Serbian writer Danilo Kis.... This work serves as a hermeneutic key for interpreting Kis's writings through the prism of circumstances in his life. Birth Certificate may be considered as a collection of historical, literary and philosophical comments.\u003c\/p\u003e (European History Quarterly)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDanilo Kis (1935–89) was a Yugoslav novelist, essayist, poet, and translator whose work generated storms of controversy in his homeland but today holds classic status. Kis was championed by prominent literary figures around the world, including Joseph Brodsky, Susan Sontag, Milan Kundera, Philip Roth, Nadine Gordimer, and Salman Rushdie. As more of his works become available in translation, they are prized by an international readership drawn to Kis's innovative brilliance as a storyteller and to his profound meditation on history, culture, and the human condition at the end of the twentieth century.A subtle analysis of a rich and varied body of writing, \u003ci\u003eBirth Certificate\u003c\/i\u003e is also a careful and sensitive telling of a life that experienced some of the last century's greatest cruelties. Kis's father was a Hungarian Jew, his mother a Montenegrin of Orthodox faith. The father disappeared into the Holocaust and the son—cosmopolitan, anticommunist, and passionately opposed to the myth-drenched nationalisms of his native lands—grew up chafing against the hypocrisies of Titoism. His writing broke with the epic mode, pioneered modernist techniques in his language, fulminated against literary kitsch, and sketched out a literary heritage \"with no Sun as its Center and Tyrant.\" Joyce and Borges were influences on his writing, which nevertheless is stunningly original. The best known of his works are \u003ci\u003eGarden, Ashes\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Encyclopedia of the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eHourglass\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Anatomy Lesson\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eA Tomb for Boris Davidovich\u003c\/i\u003e. Over the course of nearly two decades, Mark Thompson studied Kis's papers and interviewed his family members, friends, and admirers. His intimate understanding of the writer's life and his sure grasp of the region's history inform his revelatory readings of Kis's individual works.More than an appreciation of an important literary and cultural figure, this book is also a compelling guide to the destructive policies which would, shortly after Kis's death, generate the worst violence in Europe since World War II. Thompson's book pays tribute to Kis's experimentalism by being itself experimental in form. It is patterned as a series of commentaries on a short autobiographical text that Kis called \"Birth Certificate.\" This unusual structure adds to the interest and intrigue of the book, and is appropriate for treating so autobiographical a writer who believed that literary meaning is always deeply shaped by other texts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction: Great and Invisible\u003cbr\u003e Birth Certificate (A Short Autobiography) \u003ci\u003eby Danilo Kiš\u003c\/i\u003e1. Birth Certificate (A Short Autobiography)\u003cbr\u003e 2. My father\u003cbr\u003e 3. came into the world\u003cbr\u003e 4. in western Hungary\u003cbr\u003e 5. and was educated at the commercial college...\u003cbr\u003e 6. the birthplace of a certain Mr Virág...\u003cbr\u003e 7. by the grace\u003cbr\u003e 8. of Mr Joyce...\u003cb\u003eFirst Interlude—\u003ci\u003eThe Garret\u003c\/i\u003e (1962)\u003c\/b\u003e9. I believe it was the liberal policy...\u003cbr\u003e 10. together with a desire for integration...\u003cbr\u003e 11. Many details of the family chronicle...\u003cbr\u003e 12. Among my ancestors on my mother's side...\u003cbr\u003e 13. The ethnographic rarity I represent...\u003cbr\u003e 14. In 1939, in my fourth year...\u003cbr\u003e 15. my parents had me baptised...\u003cbr\u003e 16. This saved my life.\u003cbr\u003e 17. I lived until my thirteenth year...\u003cb\u003eSecond Interlude—\u003ci\u003eGarden, Ashes\u003c\/i\u003e (1965)\u003c\/b\u003e18. I worked as a servant for rich peasants...\u003cbr\u003e 19. The 'troubling dissimilarity' that Freud calls...\u003cb\u003eThird Interlude—\u003ci\u003eEarly Sorrows\u003c\/i\u003e (1969)\u003c\/b\u003e20. in my ninth year I wrote my first poems...\u003cbr\u003e 21. From my mother I inherited a propensity...\u003cb\u003eFourth Interlude—\u003ci\u003eHourglass\u003c\/i\u003e (1972)\u003c\/b\u003e22. And it was not without significance...\u003cbr\u003e 23. My mother read novels until her twentieth year...\u003cbr\u003e 24. In 1947 we were repatriated by the Red Cross...\u003cbr\u003e 25. Immediately after we arrived...\u003cbr\u003e 26. I had to wait a year or two...\u003cbr\u003e 27. For two years I learned violin...\u003cbr\u003e 28. At the secondary school I continued to write...\u003cbr\u003e 29. We were taught Russian by White Army officers...\u003cb\u003eFifth Interlude—\u003ci\u003eA Tomb for Boris Davidovich\u003c\/i\u003e (1976)\u003c\/b\u003e30. From the Gymnasium I entered the University...\u003cb\u003eSixth Interlude—\u003ci\u003eThe Anatomy Lesson\u003c\/i\u003e (1978)\u003c\/b\u003e31. As a lector for Serbo-Croatian...\u003cbr\u003e 32. For the last few years I have been living in Paris...\u003cb\u003eSeventh Interlude—\u003ci\u003eThe Encyclopaedia of the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e (1983)\u003c\/b\u003e33 (1983)\u003ci\u003eAcknowledgements\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52676657119512,"sku":"9780801448881","price":28.97,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/birth-certificate-the-story-of-danilo-kis-hardback-9780801448881","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}