Dictionary of the Khazars is a novel written by Milorad Pavić. Released in 1984, it recounts the (largely fictionalized) history of the titular peoples.
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Publisher's summary[]
Somewhere on the borders of what is now Russia, in the late 9th century A.D., the great kaghan, ruler of the Khazars, summons the three leading scholars of the known world—Christian, Jewish, Moslem—to debate before the court which religion he and his people will adopt. This is the last thing we know about the Khazars, for in the immediate aftermath of this event, the tribe is utterly destroyed, vanishing from history...
In 1689, in the lost lands where the Danube empties into the Black Sea, the Turks and Slavs are engaged in pitched battle. In the fighting, three men come face to face: Avram Brancovich, the noble warlord and litterateur; Yusuf Masudi, the Turkish lute player; and Samuel Cohen, the Jew. Each has (literally) dreamed the existence of the other two and has been tracking them down; at the moment of their encounter, all three die...
Three hundred years later, in 1982 in Istanbul, three scholars (Christian, Jew, Moslem) come together to pool their separately compiled fragmentary information about the lost tribe of the Khazars, once known to have been gathered into a single book of knowledge, The Khazar Dictionary, published in 1691 in an edition of 500 copies. 498 were destroyed by the Inquisition, one was 'consumed' and one, the "Golden Book" (with poisoned inks), survived, deadly to any Unbeliever who ignored the warnings and read more than nine pages. Now, once again at the precise moment when the three scholars may together be able to reconstitute at least part of the dictionary, two of them die...
What is the story of the Khazars? Milorad Pavic gives us the search for the Dictionary and a reconstructed possible version of the Dictionary, all in one. The rest is up to us...
Sources[]
- Wikipedia
- Goodreads