Dictionary of the Khazars

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Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel (Serbian Cyrillic: Хазарски речник, Hazarski rečnik) is the debut novel by Serbian writer Milorad Pavić, published in 1984. Originally written in Serbian, it has been translated into many languages. The English edition was first published by Knopf in New York City in 1988. There is no easily discerned plot in the conventional sense, but the central question of the book (the mass religious conversion of the Khazar people) is based on a historical event generally dated to approximately "740 AD" and the last decades of the 8th century. That year is the specific and explicit date given by Jehuda Halevi in his 1140 C.E. writings. The unearthing of the "Moses coins", dated 837-838 C.E. and connected to Khazar coinage, moved that date up by nearly a century. Christopher I. Beckwith points out, however, that "they could have been converted any time before 837/838" as well. There are more or less three different significant time periods depicted in the...

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