Dictionary of the Khazars (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Aristotle, the world’s first literary critic, observed in his POETICS that successful dramatic situations should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most novelists accept this dictum unquestioningly, and strive to create logical, “airtight” plots. In recent years, however, certain writers have experimented with more open-ended forms, looking for ways to engage the reader in structural decision-making. The textbook example of this participatory mode is Julio Cortazar’s novel HOPSCOTCH, the chapters of which can be read in several equally valid sequences. Yugoslavian poet Milorad Pavic’s first novel, DICTIONARY OF THE KHAZARS, pays homage to Cortazar by inviting the reader to skip from chapter to chapter in whatever order he pleases.

Pavic’s structural conceit is to present his novel in the form of a dictionary, filled with short topical entries on a long-forgotten people known as the Khazars, who settled between the Black and Caspian seas around the seventh century A.D. Students of contemporary literature will recognize the influence of another modern master--Jorge Luis Borges--in Pavic’s highly detailed bibliographic fantasy. The dictionary is purportedly a translation of the only surviving copy of a book written in the seventeenth century, when Khazar scholarship was in vogue. The compiler of the dictionary (who learned the lost language of the Khazars from parrots) divided his work into three separate sections, consisting of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic source material, and published it in distinct male and female editions. The reader is encouraged to choose a topic at random and follow it through the various sections, aided by tongue-in-cheek footnotes, indexes, and appendices.

The entries themselves are really a collection of fantastic tales, full of mysterious princesses whose looks can kill, occult doppelgangers who are awakened by their twin’s fatigue, dream warriors who invade and manipulate other peoples’ nightmares, and music masons who sculpt salt to sing in the wind. Behind it all looms a vast, centuries-old secret society--like something out of a Thomas Pynchon novel--that continues to exert its influences in the modern world.

DICTIONARY OF KHAZARS consolidates and refines some of the most provocative features of recent experimental fiction. A complex and profound work that is at the same time lighthearted and self-mocking, Pavic’s novel is one of those rare books that truly can be called an instant classic.

Sources for Further Study

The Atlantic. CCLXII, November, 1988, p. 100.

Booklist. LXXXV, October 15, 1988, p. 365.

Kirkus Reviews. LVI, September 15, 1988, p. 1351.

Library Journal. CXIII, November 15, 1988, p. 86.

The Nation. CCXLVII, December 5, 1988, p. 610.

The New Republic. CXCIX, December 19, 1988, p. 38.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIII, November 20, 1988, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIV, August 12, 1988, p. 43.

Time. CXXXII, December 5, 1988, p. 99.

The Washington Post Book World. XVIII, November 13, 1988, p. 6.