| Danilo Kiš | |
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Danilo kis.jpg}} |  |
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| Born | February 22 1935 Subotica, Vojvodina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia |
| Died | October 15 1989 (aged 54) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer |
Danilo Kiš (Serbian Cyrillic: Данило Киш) (February 22, 1935 – October 15, 1989) was a Yugoslavian writer of Hungarian/Jewish – Serbian/Montenegrin origin.
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Life and work
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 (Née Dragićević), a Montenegrin from Cetinje, Montenegro. During World War II, 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 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 complete a course 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. Kiš received the prestigious NIN Award for his Peščanik ("Hourglass") in 1973, which he returned 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 Paris and 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 currently in post-production. [1] Kiš was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was due to win it, were it not for his untimely death in 1989.
Bibliography
- Mansarda: satirična poema, 1962 (novel)
- Psalam 44, 1962 (novel)
- Bašta, pepeo, 1965 (novel) (Garden, Ashes)
- Rani jadi: za decu i osetljive, 1970 (short stories)
- 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)
- Čas anatomije, 1978 (polemic novel)
- Noć i magla, 1983 (drama)
- Homo poeticus, 1983 (essays and interviews)
- Enciklopedija mrtvih, 1983 (short stories)
- 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")
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: a novel (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)
