Because it’s so good, and there’s so much to say – this month we will be continuing our discussion of Ismail Kadare’s The Concert! Last month’s write-up of the book and all that surrounds it follows…
Books without Borders Group
The Concert by Ismail Kadare (Albania)
[$14.95, 444 pages]
Plot Summary (from the back cover):
Former archaeologist Silva Dibra’s brother, a tanks corps officer, has been dismissed from the Albanian army, arrested, and taken away. In the effort to learn her brother’s fate, Silva and a band of friends and family mount an investigation that leads from Tirana, Albania’s capital, to the Chinese-controlled steel mills of the north, and ultimately to Beijing.
China is somehow involved with the increasingly desperate situation in Albania, but no one knows the extent of its secret alliances, political levers, and economic control. Skender Bermema, a famous writer and friend of Silva’s, is sent to China on a fact-finding mission, and is confronted with nothing less, and nothing more, than the reality of Mao Tse-tung’s China, a nation intent on crushing individuality, independence, and creativity.
Mao’s true agenda remains veiled – and thus the intriguing promise of a mysterious gala concert to be held in Beijing, where the hand-picked foreign invitees expect to be able to decipher in the colors, figures and gestures of the Chinese actors a message about China’s intentions. And no matter what any of them may be expecting, the message is shocking beyond their wildest imaginings.
Why are we reading Ismail Kadare?:
Well, the group has decided to let individual members pick the next book (with group approval), given that said member agrees to do a minimum of research to orient our fellow readers beforehand. As I (Catherine) am going to Albania in July, and have accordingly been reading up on the country, I chose Ismail Kadare. We chose this title in particular, because it also forms a bridge to beginning to explore modern China.
So who’s Kadare?
Kadare’s works have been published in over forty countries. He has been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature and in 2005 he received the inaugural Man Booker International Prize. Kadare is the greatest Albanian writer, and one of the greatest writers of world contemporary literature. “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.
Ismail Kadare was born in Albania in 1936 and is the greatest contemporary Albanian writer. During the terror of the communist regime, Kadaré attacked totalitarianism and the doctrines of socialist realism with subtle allegories, such as “The Palace of Dreams,” a political allegory of totalitarianism, set in the Ottoman Empire capital. Published in 1980, the book was almost immediately banned after its publication. Kadare’s novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They’re also pervasively yet obliquely ironic as a result of the need to withstand political scrutiny. Among his most well known books are “Chronicle in Stone” (1977), “Broken April” (1978), and “The Concert” (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.
In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that “dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible… The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.” Some Albanian émigrés and anti-communist writers claim that, having a privileged status under Hoxha’s regime, he was in fact a socialist realism writer and not a dissident, as most people qualify him. When asked, though, he’s never claimed to be a Solzhenitsyn, arguing that such a role wasn’t readily available under Hoxha’s uniquely paranoid and insular regime.
Here’s the wikipedia link for Kadare:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_Kadare
Whassup with Albania?
Where is it?
Albania is north of Greece, and Southeast of (aka surrounded by) the Balkans. Here’s a map: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/maps/map_country_albania.html
What’s the history? (paraphrased from the Bradt Guide, 2008)
Albania has been inhabited for over eight millennia. As far as we can tell, it’s around 1000 BCE that the Illyrian culture became recognizable in the region. In the 3rd Century BCE, a capital was established at Shkodra. The last Illyrian king, Genti, was defeated by the Romans in 168 BC. The Romans ruled until 395 AD, when Albania was divvied into Constantinople’s authority (rather than Rome’s). Most of the major figures of history seem to have passed through, and considered the ports important – Julius Caesar, Pompey, Justinian, etc. At any rate, Albania became part of the Byzantine Empire. During the 4th, 5th and 6thcenturies, Albania was repeatedly sacked. In the 10th century, Albania figured in the Byzantine wars with the Bulgarians and more importantly, the Normans. Things went back and forth, with the Serbs taking sacking ascendance during the 14th century . . . it goes on and on . . . until, in the 15th century, the newly emerged Ottomans enter the fray. Around the same time that the Ottomans were taking Constantinople, they laid siege to Albania. For a remarkable 14 times, the Albanians threw off Ottoman attacks, under the leadership of the great Albanian hero, Skanderbeg (raised by the Ottomans, Georgi Castrioti took on the name Skanderbeg, a local version of “Iskander” (after Alexander the great”) and “Beg” (an adaptation of the Turkish honorific “Bey”)). Skanderbeg was uniquely able to unite the traditionally vehemently split tribes of Albania, and after his death, it all fell apart, and the Ottomans did march in. Albania, then, remained an Ottoman colony for 500 years, until the 20th Century. It was, indeed, the very last territory that the Ottomans gave up before disappearing from the historical stage. Into the void left by World War One came a couple of notable Albanian figures. First, which I won’t say anything about, was the self-appointed King Zog, but more importantly was the post World War Two communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. At first allied with the Soviet Union, in the late 1950s under Hoxha (and in fear of Soviet employment of Ottoman-style expansion), Albania allied itself with China. During this period, Albania was officially the most closed country in Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Hoxha, student rebellions and general chaos lead to the beginnings of loosening up until 1990 saw the first elections featuring political opposition in 50 years. It’s (obviously) during this last, repressive period that Kadare was writing.
Some quirks of Albanian Culture:
Blood Feuds!
This probably only impacts on reading The Concert, in terms of understanding Albania as a fiercely independent place, still carrying the history of a perhaps outmoded though once efficient (if brutal) system of justice. But: If one proposes (as I – Catherine do) to travel to Albania, one of the things one runs into after not very long is Albania’s reputation as a lawless, bloodthirsty land, which makes the medieval Scots sound like milk-fed, pewling babes. In particular, Albania is said to be ruled by the law of blood feuds.
From Wikipedia’s entry on “feuds”:
“In Albania, the blood feud has returned in rural areas after more than 40 years of being abolished by Albanian communists led by Enver Hoxha. More than 5,500 Albanian families are currently engaged in blood feuds. There are now more than 20,000 men and boys who live under an ever-present death sentence because of blood feuds. Since 1992, at least 10,000 Albanians have been killed due to blood feuds.”
I only mention this in case you’ve already heard about it. But from what I’ve read, the rules for blood feuds, as formally set down by Lek Dukaghin in the 15th Century, were extremely elaborate and not entirely unfunctional. They are matched by the rules of hospitality, which were equally extreme, and generous. If it enters into The Concert, I’d be happy to provide a legal summary. Otherwise, I urge you to read “High Albania” by M. Edith Durham, which provides an excellent summary of the thoroughly logical and judicial (if admittedly potentially bloodthirsty) working of feud rules.
We hope you can join us!
