Kis was a typically untypical Jew; born in Yugoslavia, familiar with Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian and French he stood at the crossing of languages and places that has often been the destiny of European Jews. He was also half-Jewish by descent — an increasingly typical Jewish destiny — but it’s clear from this book he was very fascinated by this part of his heritage.

The nine pieces in this collection are, appropriately for this author, wildly diverse in place and time but there is a common element of ’mythic truth’; a truth one can appreciate without being able to touch it literally or prosaically, since the events and situations are so distant or unusual. The writing is accessible yet often seems to arrive from profound reflection. It’s the fiction of a scholar or philosopher, similar to that of George Steiner, Bertrand Russell, Claudio Magris (see Babel Guide to Italian Fiction) or Jorge Luis Borges.

The most perfect and surprising story here is Simon Magus which sympathetically explores the story of the ’magician’ Simon mentioned — rubbished in fact — as an enemy of the early Christians in their New Testament. It’s a rugged satire on Christian (and probably Communist) belief and history, funny and thought-provoking.

Last Respects disinters another historical ’loser’, in this case a Hamburg dockside prostitute, Mariette, rescues her from the disdain of those who usually write the history books and celebrates her as a generous-hearted giver of love, affection and sexual healing to a generation of lonesome seafarers.

The title piece Encyclopaedia of the Dead is a Borgesian tribute to a life lived in a country (Yugoslavia) with, as they say, ’too much history’; too many changes of regime, too many invasions, revolutions, counter-revolutions, civil wars; it’s an amusing and subtle story that asks questions about narrative, biography and the texture of the life we feel we live — what would be recorded of a life if everything could somehow be recorded? It’s a story full of intimations and insights.

Interesting too in a sadder way is The Book of Kings and Fools, the lightly fictionalised story of the notorious anti-Semitic book the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the best-selling forgery in which Jewish leaders supposedly announce their millennial campaign to enslave (and no doubt finally exterminate) the Christian world.

The final, elegant little story Red Stamps with Lenin’s Picture invents a Yiddish writer in Soviet Russia, ’Mendel Osipovich’, and is a commentary on creative passions and the political and emotional realities that surround and constrain them.

’They knew how to win over sceptics with flattery and promises, bribes and threats; and the more their power spread and their followers increased, the stronger and more arrogant they grew. They blackmailed families, sowed discord in the minds of individuals, hatched plots against anyone who expressed the slightest mistrust of their doctrine. They had their own firebrands and rabble-rousers, their own secret tribunals at which they pronounced maledictions and sentences, burned the writings of their enemies, and cast anathemas on the heads of recalcitrants. People joined them in ever-increasing numbers because they rewarded the faithful and punished the rebellious.’ (p8 from Simon Magus)

’It took thirty years of research to pick up the trail of people who, though they had not lost their lives, had lost their names, cities, countries, even continents.’ (The Book of Kings and Fools)