Book Summary

In this spellbinding novel, written in Albania and smuggled into France a few pages at a time in the 1980s, Kadare denounces with rare force the machinery of the dictatorial regime, drawing us back to the ancient roots of Western civilization and tyranny.

From the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize comes a crushing story of love taken away without warning and shattered by the icy wheels of the state.

Albania: the waning years of Communism. The narrator, working for the state-controlled media agency, has taken as his lover Suzana, the daughter of a high-ranking government official, rumored to be soon appointed the dictator’s successor. Suzana’s father has forced her to end the affair, which could damage, if not ruin, his career. Still, the young man has received an invitation to attend the May First Parade on the Party platform: an enviable privilege. While the usual ceremony of the regime’s self-glorification unfolds, our narrator suddenly sees—between the flags, the propaganda streamers, and portraits of the country’s leaders—the ghostly image of Agamemnon, the terrifying general of the ancient Greeks. A hallucination or just his imagination? Instinctively he senses that his “sin” of loving will result in his own downfall, as Agamemnon’s was caused by sacrificing his daughter, Iphigenia.

In this spellbinding novel, written in Albania and smuggled into France a few pages at a time in the 1980s, Kadare denounces with rare force the machinery of the dictatorial regime, drawing us back to the ancient roots of Western civilization and tyranny.

Also included are "The Blinding Order," a parable of the Ottoman Empire about the uses of terror in authoritarian regimes, and "The Great Wall," a chilling duet between a Chinese official and a soldier in the invading army of the horrifying Tamerlane.