[Giselle]

After all this -better than Borges- controversy caused by this Liehtzu thread I ought to read this book and I finally did. My opinion is that no way this stories are better than Borges Fictions in any meaning. However this is a book that started very cold and started growing on me leaving me a very good mouth taste after I finished. In the prologue of my edition, written by Joseph Brodski he says the following:

From the outside the storm over A Tomb for Boris Davidovich seems all the more peculiar because this book has literally nothing to do with Yugoslavia and its internal situations. None of its characters are Yugoslav: They are Poles, Russians, Rumanians, Irish, Hungarians; most of them are of Jewish origin. None of them ever set foo tin Yugoslavia. Basically a Tomb for Boris Davidovich is an abbreviated fictionalized account of self destruction of that berserk Trojan horse called Comintern. The only thing that its passenger -the heroes of Danilo Kis's novel- have in common with this small country is the ideology that this country professes today and in the name of which they were murdered yesterday. Apparently that was enough to infuriate the faithful It is very interesting how a book telling about other nations and old times were that controversial in Yugoslavia at the time. Of course the pressure by the USSR decaying but still in charge had to be an oppresive external force about it.
I have to say that not all the 7 stories work as good other, in which I have to remark the mastery of tales such as the one that titles the book A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (the best in my opinion), The Knife with the Rosewood Handle, The Magic Card Dealing and Dogs and Books.
It is true that this stories are more passionate, and have a way stronger content that Borges Ficciones, but I think that although they have some parts in common, they are very differente kind of works, starting they are based in such different realities. Kis's stories are based under the weight of Communism and everything under it and Borges Ficciones are that, fictions placed in a part of the universe but that gets together with different parallels like dreams, time suspended, etc.
Both of them in their style are managed with excellence.
As a note of the Dogs and Books story, Borges is quoted with the following paragraph:

From time to timee the world is destroyed by the flame that created it, and then is born again to experience the same history. Again the same molecular particles fuse, again they give form to stones, trees, people -even to virtues and days, because for the Greeks there is no noun without substance. Again each sword and each hero, again each trivial sleeples night Under that premise, we have to agree that Kis is that flame that brings together all the ashes left by a terrible epoch and helps to start everything all over again with a sad but a the time edifying structure of a time of tragedy and pain.