Danilo Kiš was born in 1935 in Subotica, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, to Eduard Kiš, a Hungarian Jew, and Milica Kiš (born Dragićević) from Cetinje, Montenegro. During the Second World War, he lost his father and several other family members, victims of the Nazi concentration camps. He spent most of the war years with his mother and sister Danica in Hungary, after which the family moved to Cetinje, Montenegro, where Kiš graduated from high school in 1954.
He studied literature at the University of Belgrade and graduated in 1958 as the first student to complete a degree in comparative literature. He was a prominent member of the magazine Vidici, where he worked until 1960. In 1962 he published his first two novels, Mansarda and Psalam 44. He received the prestigious NIN Award for his Peščanik (Hourglass) in 1973.
Kiš was married to Mirjana Miočinović from 1962 to 1981. After their separation, he lived with Pascale Delpech until his early death from lung cancer in Paris. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was due to win it, were it not for his untimely death in 1989.
