“Memories Can’t Possibly Be So Misleading”: Danilo Kiš’s Childhood Years in Early Sorrows

Abstract

Although Danilo Kiš, the famous Yugoslavian writer, did not write purposefully children’s books, his Early Sorrows (1970) has been classified as both a children’s book and an adults’ book. My analysis of Early Sorrows, a collection of short stories linked by the central character of a little boy, will focus on three levels: the childhood’s memories, for example, the pivotal role of Kiš’s relationship to his father and, by extension, to his Jewishness. The second is to examine it within the framework of autobiographical writing. The third line of investigation involves the self-image of the child narrator. My final hypothesis is that Early Sorrows goes beyond age limits and thus belongs to crossover literature, as it has become known in the 21st century.