Dictionary of the Khazars
Milorad Pavic's 1984 novel, a foundational text of Yugoslav postmodernism, is shaped like a dictionary of three colors. The Khazars were a real Turkic people whose royal court converted to one of the three Abrahamic faiths sometime around 800 CE, and the historical record disagrees about which one. Pavic invents three competing reference works, the Christian, Islamic, and Hebrew Books, that argue about the Khazar Polemic and tell parts of the same story from incompatible angles. Readers are invited to enter at any entry, follow cross-references, and assemble their own version of the lost people. Pavic published the novel in male and female editions differing by a single paragraph, sold in tandem so couples could compare. Strange, learned, deeply playful, the book remains one of the high-water marks of late twentieth-century European fiction.
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The vanished Khazars converted to one of three faiths in the eighth century and quietly disappeared. Pavic's novel reconstructs their story as a three-religion encyclopedia, readable in any order, in two editions.
Yes. Dictionary of the Khazars is structured as a lexicon with three interlocking sections (Christian, Islamic, Jewish) and can be read in any order. The non-linear form is intentional but demanding. Most readers either embrace the puzzle or set it aside.
Yes, slightly. Milorad Pavic published two editions that differ in a single passage of about 17 lines. The variation is small but is the basis for one of the most famous gimmicks in 20th-century experimental fiction.
Dictionary of the Khazars was written by Milorad Pavic, published in 1984 by Vintage Books.
Dictionary of the Khazars is 338 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Dictionary of the Khazars takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Dictionary of the Khazars is a standalone novel by Milorad Pavic, not part of a series.
Dictionary of the Khazars is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
