Ismail Kadare is an Albanian novelist and poet who emerged as a leading literary figure in the 1960s. His works, deeply rooted in Balkan history and legends, are characterized by a subtle irony that allowed them to withstand political scrutiny. Kadare's writing possesses a distinctive voice that explores the conflict between dictatorship and authentic literature, asserting that the writer is the natural enemy of oppression. His internationally acclaimed novels, which delve into complex human experiences against the backdrop of historical upheaval, have solidified his status as a preeminent contemporary European author.
The narrative centers on Gjorg, who is thrust into a cycle of violence following his brother's murder. Bound by the kanun, the ancient code of blood feuds in the Albanian mountains, he must take vengeance on his brother's killer, which leads to his own exile as he becomes a target for retaliation. This gripping tale explores themes of honor, revenge, and the harsh realities of a code that dictates life and death in a brutal landscape.
At the heart of the Sultan's vast but fragile empire stands the mysterious Palace of Dreams: the most secret and powerful Ministry ever invented. Its task is to scour every town, village and hamlet to collect the citizens' dreams, then to sift, sort and classify them, and ultimately to interpret them, in order to identify the "master-dreams" that will provide the clues to the Empire's destinies and those of its Monarch. An entire nation's consciousness is thus tapped into and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind.Kadare's Palace of Dreams stands as the symbol of the thought-police who have, through history, been the most effective instruments of oppression at the service of dictators.
Shows how legends of betrayal and defeat simmered in European civilisation for six hundred years, culminating in the agony of one tiny population at the end of the twentieth century.
In Kadare s words, and this lyrical WWII coming of age story, Albania has found its national literature.
The narrative unfurls with the shifting intensity of a dream, enriched by unsettlingly surreal details... It is a brilliant examination of the way that authoritarian structures operate: Kafka on a grander political scale. Sunday Times
A bridge under construction in 14th Century Albania is secretly sabotaged by ferry men who are afraid of being made redundant. Officially they blame a prophecy that no bridge will stand over the river without human sacrifice to the water spirits. So the builders immure a villager and the bridge gets built. A Balkan parable by the author of The Pyramid.
Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general is despatched to Albania to recover his country's dead. Once there he meets a German general who is engaged upon an identical mission, and their conversations brings out into the open the extent of their horror and guilt, newly exacerbated by their present task. As they descend from the callous trivialities of their gruesome business, past and present, to suffering self-disgust, the author gives us glimpses of the lives of the people whose graves they are unearthing. 'He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare's is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil' Independent on Sunday
Two Irish-American scholars from Harvard journey to Albania in the 1930s with a tape recorder (a 'new fangled' invention) in order to record the last genuinely oral epic singers.
Sacrificed to further a father's blood-soaked career; sacrificed for the common good; sacrificed, then forgotten.
From the Man Booker International Prize winner comes a story of the great city of Gjirokaster and of a secret meeting that may have changed the face of Europe in the twentieth century
