The detailed telling of dreams can be irritating but in Ismail
Kadare's story of modern-day Albania they are an essential part of
the book. In the absurd situations Kadare describes, dreams
sometimes make more sense than the real events. Mark Gurabardhi, a
painter from Tirana, now works in the arts centre of a small
provincial town. He moves between his flat, the cafe and his place
of work, listening to gossip or contributing his imaginative
details to it before passing it on to his colleagues or to his
girlfriend. Sometimes the gossip reminds him of stories; when some
boys find a snake he remembers the tale of the woman who married a
serpent. A bank robbery prompts him to reflect on crime and
punishment and he retells the story of Tantalus who tried to steal
immortality. These stories, like the dreams, are told with wit and
humour but they hint at a frightening disorder in society. Mark's
boss senses no danger, for he has embraced the post-communist world
and talks lovingly of freedom, his trip abroad, his new computer
and the bright European future that they should all now enjoy.
Others are not so sure. Mark has heard that there are whispers that
the old system of customary law, the Kanun, is being reinstated and
horrific, long-buried traditions like blood feuds could be revived.
In his apartment Mark broods about what is happening and in dreams
he finds himself in the police station instead of in his office.
The frightening days of the recent communist regime merge into a
muddled, threatened present and, gradually, nightmares seep into
everyday life. This is a remarkable and disturbing story of
present-day Albania. (Kirkus UK)
As spring arrives in the Albanian mountain town of B-, some strange things are emerging in the thaw. Bank robbers strike the National Bank. The ghastly Kanun, regulator of medieval Albania's blood vendettas, is dredged up from the shipwreck of history. And the ultra-explosive secrets of the state archives, rumoured to be buried in the area, are threatening to flood the entire nation. As Mark, an artist, struggles to complete portraits of his inextricably disturbed girlfriend and of the iceberg that struck the Titanic, he finds the dreamy, peaceful rhythms of his life turned upside down by ancient love and modern barbarism, by the renaissance of Brezhnev and Oedipus and by the peculiar brutality of a country surprised and divided by its new freedom.
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