Ismail Kadare Boeken

In april 1981 breekt in het autonome gebied Kosovo een opstand van Albanese studenten uit, die door het Joegoslavische leger bloedig wordt neergeslagen. Op de fatale dag heeft chirurge Teuta Shkreli met haar staf in het ziekenhuis talloze gewonden behandeld. De autoriteiten stellen nu een onderzoek in dat bizarre vormen aanneemt: Wie heeft aan de vooravond van de rellen extra bedden laten plaatsen? Waar is het patiëntenregister gebleven? Waarom zo’n doeltreffende hulp aan ’vijanden van Joegoslavië? Na een korte periode van ontspanning wordt de onderdrukking van het Albanese volksdeel in alle hevigheid hervat. Ook de veelbelovende liefde die tussen ‘Romeo en Julia’ - een Albanese student en zijn Servische studiegenote - was opgebloeid, is gedoemd voortijdig te verstenen.

De ontmoeting van de traditionele en de moderne cultuur leidt bij enkele bewoners van Albanië tot innerlijke spanning.

Aan de vooravond van de val van het communistische regime in Albanië zoeken twee jonge mensen vrijheid en liefde.

From the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April.Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive. The bride's heart goes out to Gjorg, and even these 'civilised' strangers from the city risk becoming embroiled in the fatal mechanism of vendetta.

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