Plagiarism controversy edit
In 1976, Kiš's novel A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, inspired by his time as a lector at the University of Bordeaux was published. Kiš returned to Belgrade that year only to be hit by claims that he plagiarized portions of the novel from any number of authors. Critics also attacked the novel for its perceived Marxist themes.
Kiš responded to the scandal by writing The Anatomy Lesson. In the book, he accused his critics of parroting nationalist opinions and of being anti-literary. Several of the people that Kiš criticized in The Anatomy Lesson sought retribution. In 1981, Dragan Jeremić, a professor of literature at the University of Belgrade and opponent of Kiš, published Narcissus without a Face in which he reasserted his claim that Kiš had plagiarized A Tomb for Boris Davidovich. Dragoljub Golubović, the journalist who published the first story accusing Kiš plagiarism, sued Kiš for defamation. The case was eventually dismissed in March 1979, but not after it drew substantial attention from the public
Rattled by the plagiarism controversy and following defamation lawsuit, Kiš left Belgrade for Paris in the summer of 1979. In the 1980s, Kiš achieved greater global recognition as his works were translated into various languages. in 1983 he published The Encyclopedia of the Dead.