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.

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.

When it was first published in the author's native country, THE PALACE OF DREAMS was immediately banned. The novel revolves around a secret ministry whose task is not just to spy on its citizens, but to collect and interpret their dreams. An entire nation's unconscious is thus tapped and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind.

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