A Tomb for Boris Davidovich

In seven biographical vignettes spread over a mere 135 pages, Danilo Kis delivers a wrenching indictment of the lengths to which ideology, in this case communism, can deform the human animal. The oblique form of the stories, in which a narrator grasps at incomplete and inconclusive biographical documentation, serves to deepen their meaning by highlighting the ambiguous motivations of the doomed and the randomness of their demise. Kis's tales are not without a wry humor, which makes them even more realistic and therefore more terrifying.