The tales of Danielo Kis reexamine the relevance of mystical legends ("Simon Magus", "The Legend of the Sleepers") and offer fantastical takes on 20th century realities in metaphysical imaginings on the theme of death, in Kis's estimation "one of the obsessive themes of literature." His debt to Kafka, Borges and Nabokov (that trinity of the astonishing in modern literature) are clear, but his stories stand on their own merit. The story "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" is a remarkable elegy for the life of everyman, an acknowledgement of the narrative significance in the lives of even the least of us.

A very interesting collection of rather Borgesian short stories, obviously heavily rooted in Kiš's Jewish/Hungarian/Jugoslavian background. I was particularly impressed by the piece about the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and "The book of kings and fools", a slightly fictionalised take on the history of the notorious propaganda text "Protocols of the elders of Zion". But the final piece, "Red stamps with Lenin's picture", in which a woman writes about a poet whom she loved, now dead in a Siberian labour camp, is also very impressive. Another writer to follow up... ( )