Of all Danilo Kis's books, HOURGLASS, the account of the final months in one man's life before he is sent to a concentration camp, is generally considered his masterpiece. "A finely sustained, complex fictional performance. It is full of pain and rage and gusto and joy of living, at once side-splitting and a heartbreaker".--WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD.

In these stories Kis depicts human relationships, encounters, landscapes- the multitude of details that make up a human life.

"Kis is one of the handful of incontestably major writers of the second half of the century . . . Danilo Kis preserves the honor of literature." Partisan Review

"Let us not mince words here: Danilo Kis's Garden, Ashes is an unmitigated masterpiece, surely not just one of the best books about the Holocaust, but one of the greatest books of the past century." Aleksandar Hemon, from the introduction

'For once there had been false idols and asses' heads drawn on the walls...' Sleepers awake in a remote cave and the ancient mystic Simon Magus attempts a miracle, in these two magical, otherworldly tales from one of the greatest voices of twentieth-century Europe. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

A last major work by the influential Serbian writer to be translated into English demonstrates his use of lyrical and unguarded language and is inspired by the stories of real inmates and warders at Auschwitz, including Dr. Mengele, whose experiences shaped the themes and patterns of Kis' subsequent writings.

Written between 1980 and 1986, the stories in The Lute and the Scars were transcribed from the manuscripts left by Danilo Kis following his death in 1989. Many are autobiographical. Others resurrect protagonists belonging to Kis's fellow Central European novelists.

Stories on a Yugoslav boy during World War II whose father is a Jew and whose mother is Christian. The stories portray his games--one of them is playing at Jew--and the day he sees his father deported to a death camp. By the author of Hourglass.