A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Eastern European Literature Series)

Rating:
Summary: So Sad, So True
Review: Beautifully written, surprisingly nonchalant portrayal of the actual driving force behind the Russian Communist Revolution, namely an international gang of charismatic professional criminals. Makes you think twice before you empathise with all the victims of Stalin's camps indiscriminantly - some of them obviously deserved their terrible fate.

Rating:
Summary: wonderful, jet disturbing
Review: I have enjoyed this (and all other Danilo Kis's books) immensly.

Rating:
Summary: Short, brilliant, historical novella, extremely violent
Review: Just the chapters should grab your attention: The mechanical Lions, Dogs and Books and such. This is about the Communist "True Believers" and Stalin's purges of them. Boris Davidovich is one of those. There is just too much to talk about here, but it is a brilliant work, extremely but not gratuitously violent, and it raises some excellent philosophical questions, particularly with Miksa's killing of the skunk and getting thrown out by Reb Mendel.

Rating:
Summary: One of the 20th Century's Best
Review: This book of Kis' is a masterful work. The author said they are short stories but the publisher pushed it as a novel and in a way it is something between the two. The stories are seperate and there is not one main plot but a common theme runs through the work and occasionally characters from one story will reoccur or turn up in another story. They are connected though it seems in the sort of way as when someone might say it is a small world that we live in.
In his native land this book caused an uproar as the stories pass themselves off as fact but in Kis' style fact and fiction, history and imagination blend for a common aesthetic goal. This he picked up from Borges and his use of "document" in fiction.
All this helps the book stand out as a superior work of literature without even getting to the political theme of revolution and the role of individuals in mass movements.
This edition is perfect with the intro by Brodsky and William T. Vollmann's afterword.
A must read for anyone.