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The concert: a novel
Par Ismail Kadare. 1994
Kadare, an exile from Albania now living in France, looks at Chinese-Albanian relations during the 1970s. His story centers around…
Silva Dibra and her brother Arian, who, after refusing to follow orders to surround a Communist Party committee, was dismissed from the army and has disappeared. The story culminates in a revelation made by Mao Zedong at a concert in China
Chronicle in stone
Par Ismail Kadare. 1987
In this autobiographical novel, the confusion and terror of World War II are portrayed through the eyes of a small…
boy, as his Albanian city is occupied and besieged. He introduces his parents, grandparents, and friends and relates their suffering under enemy rule, inadvertently revealing the childlike naivete that dominates the entire population of his secluded, mountain world
Le dîner de trop: roman
Par Ismail Kadare. 2009
« Gjirokastër - la « ville de pierre » au sud de l'Albanie - voit déferler les troupes allemandes qui…
remontent de la Grèce envahie. À leur tête, un colonel nazi qui a fait ses études en Allemagne avec un dignitaire de la ville, le docteur Gurameto. Le colonel von Schwabe retrouve avec effusion son ex-condisciple qui l'invite à dîner. Or, des maquisards ouvrent le feu sur l'avant-garde des blindés allemands. En représailles, les nazis raflent dans le même temps des otages parmi les habitants de la cité. Le docteur Gurameto se sent contraint durant le souper avec l'état-major allemand de convaincre le colonel de les libérer - y compris un pharmacien juif - sous peine de passer pour traître aux yeux de la population. Il obtient gain de cause. Une fois la guerre terminée et le communisme instauré, cette affaire revient sur le tapis. Au moment où dans tout le bloc communiste la paranoïa stalinienne atteint des sommets, la libération du pharmacien juif par le colonel nazi désigne Gjirokastër comme un noyau du grand complot planétaire visant à décapiter les pays socialistes... Quelle est la clé de l'énigme du fameux dîner ? Et si l'invité du docteur Gurameto n'avait été autre qu'un mort ? » -- 4e de couv
L'accident: roman
Par Ismail Kadare. 2008
"Il est question ici d'un accident dans l'acception littérale du mot : un taxi quitte la route et plonge dans…
un ravin, il y a deux tués, un homme et une femme, un couple d'amants à l'évidence ; quant au chauffeur survivant, il est bien incapable d'expliquer la cause de l'accident. Il semble que cette cause ait un rapport avec ce qu'il a vu ou cru voir dans son rétroviseur. Mais il n'est pas en état de préciser ce qu'il a vu au juste, ni même de dire qui étalent les deux passagers, où ils se rendaient et pourquoi tout, chez eux, paraissait si indéchiffrable. Une histoire d'amour peut sembler la chose la plus banale qui soit au monde, mais peut aussi apparaître comme inextricable. [...] Dans cette oeuvre magistrale, Ismail Kadaré a tenté de raconter l'irracontable : une histoire d'amour ou l'histoire d'un meurtre, voire une tout autre histoire les recouvrant toutes deux tel un masque ? Jusqu'à la fin, la question ne cesse d'obséder le lecteur". -- 4e de couv
The Traitor's Niche: A Novel
Par Ismail Kadare. 1984
"Kadare is inevitably linked to Orwell and Kundera, but he is a far deeper ironist than the first, and a…
better storyteller than the second. He is a compellingly ironic storyteller because he so brilliantly summons details that explode with symbolic reality." —The New YorkerAt the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in the main square of Constantinople, a niche is carved into ancient stone. Here, the sultan displays the severed heads of his adversaries. People flock to see the latest head and gossip about the state of the empire: the province of Albania is demanding independence again, and the niche awaits a new trophy . . . Tundj Hata, the imperial courier, is charged with transporting heads to the capital—a task he relishes and performs with fervor. As he travels through obscure and impoverished territories, he makes money from illicit side–shows, offering villagers the spectacle of death. The head of the rebellious Albanian governor would fetch a very high price indeed. The Traitor's Niche is a surreal tale of tyranny and rebellion, in a land where armies carry scarecrows, state officials ban entire languages, and the act of forgetting is more complicated than remembering.Long-listed for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize"The name of the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare regularly comes up at Nobel Prize time, and he is still a good bet to win it one of these days . . . He is seemingly incapable of writing a book that fails to be interesting." —The New York Times
Elegy for Kosovo: A Novel
Par Ismail Kadare. 2011
June 28, 1389: Six hundred years before Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic called for the repression of the Albanian majority in…
Kosovo, there took place, on the Field of the Blackbirds, a battle shrouded in legend. A coalition of Serbs, Albanian Catholics, Bosnians, and Romanians confronted and were defeated by the invading Ottoman army of the Sultan Murad. This battle established the Muslim foothold in Europe and became the centerpiece of Serbian nationalist ideology, justifying the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars that the world witnessed with horror at the end of the past century. In this eloquent and timely reflection on war, memory, and the destiny of two peoples, Ismail Kadare explores in fiction the legend and the consequences of that defeat. Elegy for Kosovo is a heartfelt yet clear-eyed lament for a land riven by hatreds as old as the Homeric epics and as young as the latest news broadcast.
Broken April
Par Ismail Kadare. 1990
Gjorg is a young mountaineer who (much against his will) has just killed a man in order to avenge the…
death of his older brother, and who expects to be killed himself in accordance with the Code that regulates life in the Albanian highlands. A young couple on their honeymoon has come to this place to study its age-old customs-including the blood feud. In Broken April, Ismail Kadare intersects the fates of both Gjorg and the young couple with visions of an unending cycle of obligatory murder and the horrifying effects it has on their respective lives.
A Girl in Exile: Requiem for Linda B.
Par Ismail Kadare. 2009
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice“Erotic, paranoiac and lightly fantastical.” —The Wall Street Journal“Ismail Kadare's readers are astonished…
every year when the Nobel committee overlooks him. . . . A Girl in Exile, published in Albanian in 2009, may rekindle the worldwide hopes.” —The New York Times Book ReviewDuring the bureaucratic machinery of Albania’s 1945–1991 dictatorship, playwright Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. A girl—Linda B.—has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession.He soon learns that Linda’s family, considered suspect, was exiled to a small town far from the capital. Under the influence of a paranoid regime, Rudian finds himself swept along on a surreal quest to discover what really happened to Linda B.“At a time when parts of the world are indulging nostalgia for communism, Kadare’s novel confronts the infuriating impossibility of art in an autocratic, anti–individualist system.” —The Washington Post“A Girl in Exile confirms Kadare to be the best writer at work today who remembers—almost aggressively so, refusing to forget—European totalitarianism.” —The New Republic
The Doll: A Portrait of My Mother
Par Ismail Kadare. 2015
In this autobiographical novel, Albania’s most renowned novelist and poet Ismail Kadare explores his relationship with his mother in a…
delicately wrought tale of home, family, creative aspirations, and personal and political freedom.“Houses like ours seemed constructed with the specific purpose of preserving coldness and misunderstanding for as long as possible.”In his father’s great stone house with hidden rooms and even a dungeon, Ismail grows up with his mother at the center of his universe. Fragile as a paper doll, she finds herself at odds with her tight–lipped and wise mother–in–law who, as is the custom for women of a certain age, will never again step foot over the threshold to leave her home. Young Ismail finds it difficult to understand his mother’s tears, though he can understand her boredom. She told him the reason herself in a phrase that terrified and obsessed the boy: “The house is eating me up!”As Ismail explores his world, his mother becomes fearful of her intellectual son—he uses words she does not understand, writes radical poetry, falls in love far too easily, and seems to renounce everything she believes in. He will, she fears, have to exchange her for some other superior mother when he becomes a famous writer.The Doll is a delicate and disarming autobiographical novel, an exploration of Kadare’s creative aspirations and their tangled connections to his childhood home and his mother’s tenuous place within it.
A Dictator Calls
Par Ismail Kadare. 2022
Using a sophisticated and literary version of the ever-popular game of telephone to examine the relationship of writers with tyranny,…
Ismail Kadare reflects on three particular minutes in a long moment of time when the dark shadow of Joseph Stalin passed over the worldIn June 1934, Stalin allegedly called Boris Pasternak and they spoke about the arrest of Osip Mandelstam. A telephone call from the dictator was not something necessarily relished, and in the complicated world of literary politics it would have provided opportunities for potential misunderstanding and profound trouble. But this was a call one could not ignore. Stalin wanted to know what Pasternak thought of the idea that Mandelstam had been arrested.Ismail Kadare explores the afterlife of this phone call using accounts of witnesses, reporters, writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, wives, mistresses, biographers, and even archivists of the KGB. The results offer a meditation on power and political structure, and how literature and authoritarianism construct themselves in plain sight of one another. Kadare&’s reconstruction becomes a gripping mystery, as if true crime is being presented in mosaic.A little time ago the poet Mandelstam was arrested. What have you to say to that, Comrade Pasternak?
The accident: a novel
Par Ismail Kadare, John Hodgson. 2010
Vienna, the autobahn. A taxi leaves the carriageway and strikes the crash barrier, flinging its male and female passengers out…
of its back doors as it spins through the air. The driver cannot explain why he lost control; he only says that the mysterious couple in the back seat seemed to be about to kiss. The investigation into the deaths uncovers a mutually destructive obsession, one mirroring the conflicts of the Balkans. Some descriptions of sex. 2010. Uniform title: Aksidenti.
The siege
Par Ismail Kadare, David Bellos. 2008
In the early fifteenth century, the people of Albania know that their fate is sealed - they have refused to…
negotiate with the Ottoman Empire, and war is now inevitable. Soon enough, dust kicked up by Turkish horses is spotted from a citadel, and brightly coloured banners, hastily constructed minarets, and tens of thousands of men fill the plain below. From this moment on, the world is waiting to hear that the fortress has fallen. Descriptions of sex, explicit descriptions of violence and strong language. 2001. Uniform title: Kështjella.
The successor
Par Ismail Kadare, David Bellos. 2003
The successor to 'the Guide' (Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha) is found shot in his bed, but is it suicide or…
murder? Suspects abound, including a rising political figure who will now be named successor, the architect who remodelled the successor's elaborate house, the successor's wife, and the Guide himself, elderly, ailing, and blind, but unable to imagine being replaced. Some descriptions of sex and some descriptions of violence. 2003. Uniform title: Pasardhësi.
Le grand hiver: roman
Par Jusuf Vrioni, Ismail Kadaré. 1978

A girl in exile: requiem for Linda B
Par Ismail Kadare, John Hodgson. 2018
Playwright Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the ruling regime. He discovers that a signed copy of his…
latest book was found with the body of a girl who committed suicide. To clear himself, he must explain her death. Translated from the original 2009 Albanian edition. 2016
The traitor's niche: a novel
Par Ismail Kadare, John Hodgson. 2018
In the heart of the Ottoman Empire is a niche carved out of ancient stone that houses the severed heads…
of dissidents. Field courier Tundj Hata is charged with delivering the heads, and dreams of taking the Albanian governor's. Translated from the original 1978 Albanian edition. Some violence. 2017
Twilight of the eastern gods
Par Ismail Kadare, David Bellos. 2014
Fictionalized account of the author's experiences at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow. An Albanian student wakes to…
an uproar over a Russian author winning the Nobel Prize, and examines the culture around him. Translated from the 1981 French edition. 2014
The Accident
Par Ismail Kadare, David Bellos. 2010
The new book from the winner of the inaugural International Man Booker Prize is a modern-day love story of powerful…
obsession set against the background of dark political intrigue.On the autobahn in Vienna a taxi leaves the carriageway and strikes the crash barrier, flinging its male and female passengers out of its back doors as it spins through the air. The driver cannot explain why he lost control; he only says that the mysterious couple in the back seat seemed to be about to kiss . . .Set against the tumultuous backdrop of war and its aftermath in the Balkans, The Accident intimately documents an affair between two people caught in each other's webs. The investigation into their deaths uncovers a mutually destructive obsession that mirrors the conflicts of the region. A destabilizing mixture of vivid hallucination and cold reality, Ismail Kadare's new novel is a bold and fascinating departure.From the Hardcover edition.
The Succesor: A Novel
Par Ismail Kadare, David Bellos. 2011
A powerful political novel based on the sudden, mysterious death of the man who had been handpicked to succeed the…
hated Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? That is the burning question. The man who died by his own hand, or another's, was Mehmet Shehu, the presumed heir to the ailing dictator. So sure was the world that he was next in line, he was known as The Successor.And then, shortly before Shehu was to assume power, he was found dead. The Successor is simultaneously a mystery novel, a historical novel-based on actual events and buttressed by the author's private conversations with the son of the real-life Mehmet Shehu, and a psychological novel. How do you live when nothing is sure?
Doruntine
Par Ismail Kadare, Jon Rothschild. 1988
An old woman is awoken in the dead of night by knocks at her front door. She opens it to…
find her daughter, Doruntine, standing there alone in the darkness. She has been brought home from a distant land by a mysterious rider she claims is her brother Konstandin. But unbeknownst to her, Konstandin has been dead for years. What follows is chain of events which plunges an Albanian village into fear and mistrust. Who is the ghost rider?