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Overview
Early Sorrows centers on Andreas Sam, a highly intelligent boy whose life at first seems secure. His mother and sister dote on him; he excels at school; when he is hired out as a cowherd to help with the family's finances, he reads the day away in the company of his best friend, the dog. He can only sense that terrible things may be going on in the world. Soon soldiers are marching down the road, and then one day, many people from the village are herded together and taken away, among them, his father, the dreamer.Synopsis
Early Sorrows centers on Andreas Sam, a highly intelligent boy whose life at first seems secure. His mother and sister dote on him; he excels at school; when he is hired out as a cowherd to help with the family's finances, he reads the day away in the company of his best friend, the dog. He can only sense that terrible things may be going on in the world. Soon soldiers are marching down the road, and then one day, many people from the village are herded together and taken away, among them, his father, the dreamer.
Jaroslaw Anders
...[A]n exquisite translation by Michael Henry Heim...Reading these sad and poetic talesone begins to suspect that this is not the whole story...that there is a ghastly mystery lurking somewhere within the folds of the narrative. —The New Republic
Editorials
Boston Globe
[Kis] mixes irony and lyricism to convey the tragedy of the Holocaust and Stalinism.Jaroslaw Anders
...[A]n exquisite translation by Michael Henry Heim...Reading these sad and poetic talesone begins to suspect that this is not the whole story...that there is a ghastly mystery lurking somewhere within the folds of the narrative. —The New RepublicPublishers Weekly
Never before translated into English, this collection of interconnected stories, originally published in Belgrade in 1969, form the poignant, lightly fictionalized account of the acclaimed late novelist's boyhood in Yugoslavia. With a remarkable combination of affection, whimsy and wretchedness, these 19 lyrical, very short stories tell a recurring tale of spiritual innocence tainted by shame and the terror of life in hiding. In addition to his finesse with language and sensory detail, Kis succeeds at rendering a precocious child's struggle to comprehend the world. In the characteristic "The Game," a father hiding his Jewish origins is proud but unnerved when he catches his fair-haired son pretending to be a Jewish feather merchant, like the grandfather whom the boy has never seen. Frightened by the uncanny spectacle, the boy's gentile mother spins a bedtime tale that subtly informs the boy of racism and its mortal consequences. In each brief vignette, the boy contemplates his own disappearance and death, which he sees foreshadowed in his father's deportation to Auschwitz. Though its subtitle pitches the book to a relatively limited audience, Kis's slim work will touch vestigial nerves in most readers. (Oct.)Jaroslaw Anders
...[A]n exquisite translation by Michael Henry Heim...Reading these sad and poetic tales, one begins to suspect that this is not the whole story...that there is a ghastly mystery lurking somewhere within the folds of the narrative.— The New Republic