Danilo Kiš

(1935 - 1989)

Born in Yugoslavia in 1935, Danilo Kiš survived the Holocaust, attended high school in Montenegro, graduated from the University of Belgrade in 1958, and published his first and second novels, The Garret and Psalm 44, in 1962. Writing in Serbo-Croatian, he first won international attention for his third novel, Garden, Ashes, in 1965. In his essay “Advice to a Young Writer,” published in 1984, five years before he died, he suggested, “Do not write for the ‘average reader’: all readers are average.”