[1] 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 the last decades of the 8th century or the early 9th century when the Khazar royalty and nobility converted to Judaism, and part of the general population followed.

Most of the characters and events described in the novel are entirely fictional, as is the culture ascribed to the Khazars in the book, which bears little resemblance to any literary or archeological evidence.

The novel takes the form of three cross-referenced mini-encyclopedias, sometimes contradicting each other, each compiled from the sources of one of the major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism).

[citation needed] In 2018, literary critic Matthias Friese argued that Pavić premised Dictionary of the Khazars on a strict dichotomy between lexical semantics and "social reality."

According to Friese, in Dictionary of the Khazars, the deaths of the "dreamers" prior to meeting each other stemmed from Pavić's belief that semantic domains should be relegated to the world of "dreams" and not allowed to expand into the "flesh of reality."