I urge you to read this reissued collection from a writer who reinvented and invigorated the short story...[The title story] is one of the most moving I have ever read, a testament to both the power and the weakness of literature and human memory... He is one of those writers you feel is on your side. In short, I cannot recommend this book highly enough, or urge it on you more strongly

Kis is woefully undervalued. He belongs at the centre of European literature, not on its fringes. . .It is past time for Kis's rediscovery.

Compulsively readable

Kiš is one of the great European writers of the post-war period

Fantasy chases reality and reality chases fantasy. Pirandello and Borges are not far away. But these names are intended as approximate references. Kiš is a new, original writer

In The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Danilo Kiš offers a vision that expands the domain of life at the expense of that of death. These stories present that vision with a journalist's precision, with a taxidermist's tactile knowledge of era and realm, with the tenacity of a true son of the century

Intense and exotic, his mysteries hint at unspeakable secrets that remain forever beyond the story-teller's grasp

This translation, by Michael Henry Heim, is superb

The Encyclopedia of the Dead is a book of wonders, product of a vivid imagination that is yet a model of narrative restraint

This ambitious and magical novel is made all the more remarkable by its muscular prose redolent with atmosphere.

Sara Taylor has a completely natural, unforced feel for language and voice: a remarkable debut.

A precocious talent.

Ambiguous gender roles, grotesque situations and the whiff of decay hanging over The Shore – brilliantly imagined through the stench of chicken factories – lend a southern Gothic feel to the writing. There are sections of brutal realism, magic realism and speculative fiction. Other dystopias come to mind, notably David Mitchell’s time-hopping epic Cloud Atlas, but also Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and its themes of sexually transmitted plagues and subjugation of women.

A haunting and staggering debut novel, this is a multi-layered exploration of redneck Virginia through the eyes of its women.

An impressive debut novel

An original new voice in fiction

Lyrical writing and quietly tragic storytelling

A really promising debut . . . the beauty of it is astounding . . . enchanting.

[A] savage yet hyper-readable debut … [a] harrowing, high-octane novel.

This is not a novel for the faint-hearted but dare to read it for the sinuous fluency of the writing.

This is an outstanding book, one that makes the reader pause and take stock. It is unsettling, challenging and yet beautiful – made all the more so by the author’s pared back language and careful evocation of the land, marshes, oyster beds and crabs, and the miseries and small joys of island life … this is an extraordinary beginning to a literary career.

A superb first novel . . . [it is] a significant achievement to produce a book of this quality . . . [there is] a wonderful sense of place.

Reminiscent of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and just as ambitious

An impressive debut.

Already on the longlist for the Baileys Prize, this is an island story told in daisy-chain sequence, a series of succinct vignettes that come together as a vivid portrait of the Shore itself, until you can almost smell the salt air and the stench of slaughtered chicken.

Some extraordinary images . . . a wonderful first novel.

Taylor’s prose is dreamy and surprisingly playful.

A wonderful read.

Exuberant, magical and incredibly ambitious, but Sara Taylor pulls it off with style.

Taylor shows a special affinity with the lives of women that makes for a powerful debut