Bøger af Ismail Kadare

An early masterpiece from the inaugural winner of the International Man Booker Prize.

'Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you.'A fascniating exploration of the relationship between writers and tyranny, from the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize.In June 1934, Joseph Stalin allegedly telephoned the famous novelist and poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of fellow Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam. In a fascinating combination of dreams and dossier facts, Ismail Kadare reconstructs the three minutes they spoke and the aftershocks of this tense, mysterious moment in modern history.Weaving together the accounts of witnesses, reporters and writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, Kadare tells a gripping story of power and political structures, of the relationship between writers and tyranny. The telling brings to light uncanny parallels with Kadare's experience writing under dictatorship, when he received an unexpected phone call of his own.Translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson'Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness.' Los Angeles Times

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.

Albanien 1943. De tyske tropper står foran byen Gjirokastra i det sydlige Albanien som første etape i en omhyggeligt planlagt invasion. Den nazistiske øverstbefalende viser sig at være en gammel ven af byens fremtrædende kirurg doktor Gurameto. Oberst von Schwabe er begejstret over gensynet og Gurameto inviterer ham til middag. Men tyskerne har taget gidsler blandt byens indbyggere og mens musikken og champagnen flyder forsøger Gurameto - velvidende at han nu anses for at være landsforræder - at overtale obersten til at frigive gidslerne. Det lykkes og Gurameto hyldes som byens helt. Mange år senere da krigen er slut og kommunismen for længst er indført dukker sagen imidlertid op igen. Stalins paranoia er på sit højeste og pludselig ser han den gådefulde middag som et klart bevis på at Gurameto ja hele byen Gjirokastra står bag et verdensomspændende komplot med det formål at udrydde socialismen og Stalin selv. Ismail Kadaré (f. 1936) er født og opvokset i Gjirokastra i det sydlige Albanien men deler nu sin tid mellem Albanien og Frankrig. Han har udgivet mere end 30 romaner som er blevet oversat til mere end 40 sprog. På dansk er udgivet flere romaner. Senest Agamemnons datter (2007). Kadaré modtog i 2005 Den Internationale Man Booker pris for romanen Efterfølgeren (på dansk 2006).

"In 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"--

Translated from: Le craepuscule des dieux de la steppe. Paris: Fayard, A1981.

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.

From the winner of the first ever Man Booker International Prize: 'a novelist of dazzling mastery' (Independent)At the centre of young Ismail's world is the unknowable figure of his mother.

A vivid historical novel set in the fifteenth century, by the winner of the Man Booker International Prize

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 fervour.

The Man Booker International–winning author of Broken April and The Siege, Albania’s most renowned novelist, and perennial Nobel Prize contender Ismail Kadare explores three giants of world literature—Aeschylus, Dante, and Shakespeare—through the lens of resisting totalitarianism. In isolationist Albania, which suffered under a Communist dictatorship for nearly half a century, classic global literature reached Ismail Kadare across centuries and borders—and set him free. The struggles of Hamlet, Dante, and Aeschylus’s tragic figures gave him an understanding of totalitarianism that shaped his novels. In these incisive critical essays informed by personal experience, Kadare provides powerful evidence that great literature is the enemy of dictatorship and imbues these timeless stories with powerful new meaning. With eloquent prose and the narrative drive of a great mystery novel, Kadare renews our readings of the classics and lends them a distinctly Albanian tint. Like Mark Twain’s Mississippi River, Márquez’s Macondo, and Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Kadare’s Albania emerges as a microcosm of civilization; here, blood vengeance in mountain communities reaches the dramatic heights of Hamlet’s dilemma, funereal rites take on the air of Greek tragedy, and political repression gives life the feel of Dante’s nine circles of Hell. Like Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, Essays on World Literature casts reading itself as a daring act of resistance to artistic suppression. Kadare’s insights into the Western canon secure his own place within it.

When a girl is found dead with a signed copy of Rudian Stefa's latest book in her possession, the author finds himself summoned for an interview by the Party Committee.

One of the earliest novels from Man Booker International Prize-winner Ismail Kadare, in English for the first time

Sacrificed to further a father's blood-soaked career; sacrificed for the common good; sacrificed, then forgotten.

From the Man Booker International Prize winner comes a story of the great city of Gjirokaster and of a secret meeting that may have changed the face of Europe in the twentieth century

Tyranny flourishes in the shade of the pyramids. Everyone, including the Leader, lives under the iron law of slavery.

It's the 1970s and cracks are starting to appear in the alliance between China and its Communist cohort Albania. When an Albanian steps on the foot of a Chinese diplomat the tension cranks up - couriers between Tirana and Beijing carry annotated x-rays of the foot back and forth.

This novel serves as a parable on the conflicts that ravage the Balkan states, with the monk Gjon, 14th-century chronicler, revealing the story behind the building of a bridge.

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.

From the International Man Booker winner - a fever dream of a novel where love, jealousy and obsession collide

A classic medieval mystery from the winner of the inaugural Man Booker Prize

Translated by Barbara Bray from the French version of the Albanian by Jusuf VrioniAt the heart of the Sultan's vast empire stands the mysterious Palace of Dreams.

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.

Tyranny in Tirana, a novel from the inaugural Man Booker International Prize winner based on the final days of Enver Hoxha.

Two Irish-American scholars from Harvard journey to Albania in the 1930s with a tape recorder (a 'new fangled' invention) in order to record the last genuinely oral epic singers.

From behind the closed door, the man shouts, 'Be on your way - you have no business here!''Open up, I am the messenger of Death'. As spring arrives in the Albanian mountain town of B, some strange things are emerging in the thaw.