Ismail Kadare Libros

El protagonista absoluto de abril quebrado es el «Kanun», ley de sangre no escrita que rige de forma inexorable la existencia de los montañeses de Albania. Por el «Kanun», Gjorg Berisha se cobra la sangre de Zef Kryeqyqe, cuadragésima cuarta víctima de una venganza que se prolonga ya durante setenta años, constituyéndose a su vez en deudor. Como contrapunto a la historia que protagoniza Gjorg, Ismail Kadaré traza la del viaje de bodas a estas ásperas tierras del curioso escritor Bessian Vorpsi, quien espera, ilusamente, observar esta realidad sin verse atrapado en ella. La presente edición ha sido minuciosamente revisada por Ramón Sánchez Lizarralde, autor de la traducción, de acuerdo con la edición definitiva de su obra que acometió el autor, libre ya de trabas, a partir de que obtuviera asilo político en Francia en 1990.

En "La cena equivocada", de Ismail Kadaré, un médico albanés, Gurameto, se enfrenta a las consecuencias de una cena con un oficial alemán durante la ocupación nazi. Años después, en un contexto de paranoia comunista, su acto de hospitalidad se convierte en traición. Kadaré explora la complejidad de la lealtad y la memoria histórica.

"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."--Page 4 of cover

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