Early Sorrows

Early Sorrows: For Children and Sensitive Readers is a collection of nineteen short stories by Yugoslav author Danilo Kiš.
The book is part of what Kiš called his "family cycle" trilogy, consisting of the novels Garden, Ashes, and Hourglass. Though Early Sorrows was published after Garden, Ashes, it is effectively the first novel in the trilogy.

Summary

Early Sorrows is composed of vignettes about Andy Sam, a young Serbian boy who works as a cowherd to bring in money for his family. Andy spends most of the day reading.

Themes

Like much of Kiš's work, Early Sorrows deals with the Holocaust. Andy's father, like Kiš's own father, is sent to Auschwitz. Notably, it is the only work of Kiš's in which he depicts a scene inside a concentration camp.