Birth Certificate

How 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.

-- Adam Thirlwell * Times Literary Supplement *

Mark Thompson's biography of Danilo Kiš takes its cue from Hourglass... 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.

-- Chris Miller * PN Review *

With 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.

* Publishers Weekly *

"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

Even 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’sBirth Certificate(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.

-- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto * Times Literary Supplement "Books of the Year" *

British 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.

* Choice *

Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kis 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.

* European History Quarter