A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian language

Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...

: Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča / Гробница за Бориса Давидовича) is a collection of seven short stories by Danilo Kiš

Danilo Kiš

Danilo Kiš was a Yugoslavian novelist, short story writer and poet who wrote in Serbo-Croatian. Kiš was influenced by Bruno Schulz, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges and Ivo Andrić, among other authors...

 written in 1976

1976 in literature

The year 1976 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Saul Bellow won both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.-New books:*Kingsley Amis – The Alteration...

 (translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 by Duska Mikic-Mitchell in 1978). The stories are based on historical events and deal with themes of political deception, betrayal, and murder in Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 during the first half of the 20th century (except for "Dogs and Books" which takes place in 14th century France). Several of the stories are written as fictional biographies wherein the main characters interact with historical figures. The Dalkey Archive Press

Dalkey Archive Press

Dalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works...

 edition includes an introduction by Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...

 and an afterword by William T. Vollman. Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...

 includes A Tomb for Boris Davidovich in his list of canonical works of the period he names the Chaotic Age (1900–present) in The Western Canon.
The book was featured in Penguin

Penguin Books

Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

's series "Writers from the Other Europe" from the 1970s. Philip Roth

Philip Roth

Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...

 was the general editor, and the series included authors such as Tadeusz Borowski

Tadeusz Borowski

Tadeusz Borowski was a Polish writer and journalist. His wartime poetry and stories dealing with his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz are recognized as classics of Polish literature and had much influence in Central European society.- Early life :...

, Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents, and regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, in the province of Galicia then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spent...

, Jiří Weil

Jirí Weil

Jiří Weil was a Czech writer. He was Jewish. His noted works include the two novels Life with a Star , and Mendelssohn Is on the Roof , as well as many short stories, and other novels....

, and Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...

 among others.

The Stories

• "The Knife with the Rosewood Handle"

Miksha is a Jewish  tailor's

Tailor

A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...

 apprentice turned revolutionary whose commitment and cruelty lead him to commit a sordid murder and die in prison.

• "The Sow that Eats her Farrow"

Verschoyle, a Republican volunteer in the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

, is punished for criticizing the Soviet takeover.

• "The Mechanical Lions"

Chelyustnikov organises a fake religious service for a Western dignitary visiting Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

.

• "The Magic Card Dealing"

The seemingly unmotivated murder of Dr. Kaul Taube is revealed to have been decided by a card game between two criminals.

• "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich"

Boris Davidovich Novsky, a noted revolutionary, is arrested with the intent to extract a confession from him in a show-trial. During his interrogation Novsky duels with his interrogator Fedukin over how he will be remembered in the future, fighting over the conclusion to his biography.

• "Dogs and Books"

Set up as a parallel to "Boris Davidovich", the story deals with Baruch David Neumann, a Jew forced to convert to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 during a pogrom

Pogrom

A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...

.

• "The Short Biography of A. A. Darmolatov"

Darmolatov, a minor revolutionary poet, is ruined by disease rather than terror.

External links

• A Tomb for Boris Davidovich - Dalkey Archive Press
  Dalkey Archive Press
  Dalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works...
  
  information page and excerpt.