Early Sorrows
Early Sorrows: For Children and Sensitive Readers (Serbo-Croatian: Rani jadi: Za decu i osetljive; Serbian Cyrillic: Рани јади: За децу и осетљиве) is a collection of nineteen short stories by Yugoslav author Danilo Kiš.
 | |
| Author | Danilo Kiš |
|---|---|
| Original title | Rani jadi:za decu i osetljive |
| Translator | Michael Henry Heim |
| Country | Serbia |
| Language | Serbo-Croatian |
| Publisher | Nolit (Serbo-Croatian) New Directions (English) |
Publication date | 1970 |
Published in English | 1998 |
| Pages | 118 (English 1st edition) |
| Followed by | Garden, Ashes |
The book is part of what Kiš called his "family cycle" trilogy, consisting of the novels Garden, Ashes (1965), and Hourglass (1972).[1] Though Early Sorrows was published after Garden, Ashes, it is effectively the first novel in the trilogy.[2]
Summary
Early Sorrows is composed of vignettes about Andy Sam, a young Serbian boy who works as a cowherd to bring in money for his family. Andy spends most of the day reading.[3]
Themes
Like much of Kiš's work, Early Sorrows deals with the Holocaust. Andy's father, like Kiš's own father, is sent to Auschwitz.[3] Notably, it is the only work of Kiš's in which he depicts a scene inside a concentration camp (Andy hallucinates about his relatives who were taken away by Nazis).[4]
References
- Sacks, Sam (24 August 2012). "Book Review: Psalm 44, The Attic, The Lute and the Scars". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2014.
- Kiš, Danilo (1995). Sontag, Susan (ed.). Homo Poeticus. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
- Kiš, Danilo (1998). Early Sorrows (English translation by Michael Henry Heim ed.). New York: New Directions.
- Thompson, Mark (2013). Birth Certificate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.