The novel was written (in Serbian) in 1960 and published in 1962, along with his novel The Attic, and tells the story of the last few hours of a woman and her child in a Nazi concentration camp, before they escape.
Her friend Žana and the mysterious Maks have laid the groundwork for the escape, which is to take place as Allied troops are approaching, the sound of their distant artillery forming a constant background to the activities in the camp.
These involve an early run-in with antisemitism: fourteen-year-old Marija, who grew up in the Vojvodina, was sent to the country to escape the persecution of Jews only to hear from a girl her age that she and her ancestors are guilty of killing Christ.
She hastens home to her parents; her drunk father explains to her what is happening to the area's Jewish population, a truth she is not prepared to hear but then accepts.
As they do so, Jan starts crying and German guards catch on, but thinking that they are women from the area looking to steal the camp's supplies they do not pursue them.
In later interviews he distanced himself somewhat from the novel, saying it was too direct; the book's English translator John K. Cox suggests this may be in reference to his very prominent deus ex machina (the Maks character) or the "heavy-handed recasting of Mengele as 'Dr.
[1] The "heavy-handedness" of the Mengele character and other aspects of the book, including "purple outpourings of emotion", is noted also by Sam Sacks of the Wall Street Journal.
Sacks compliments the translation by Cox, and praises the book as a whole: "the material in "Psalm 44" is inherently powerful, and some of Kiš's writing, especially that describing the knife-edge escape, is quite fine".