Tag-Archive for ◊ ismail kadare ◊

Author:
• Friday, June 24th, 2022

Ismail Kadare was born into a non-religious family in Gjirokastër in Southern Albania in 1936. His father was a civil servant and his mother was from a wealthy family. He went to primary and secondary schools in Gjirokastër, followed by language studies at the University of Tirana in the faculty of history and philology, where he obtained a teaching diploma in 1956. He continued his studies at the Maxim Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow until 1960.

Kadare was a member of the Albanian parliament from 1970 to 1982. Following strife with the authorities in 1975 over a politically satirical poem, he was not allowed to publish any of his work for three years. He was accused by the president of the league of Albanian Writers and Artists of intentionally avoiding writing about politics by writing mainly about history and myths, thus missing the point that Kadare preferred using these means as an allegory to tackle the current political issues without fearing repercussions.

Being an eminent figure in Albania since the sixties, Kadare sought and obtained asylum in France before the fall of communism in his country. He stated: “Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible … The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship”. Since 1990 he has lived both in Paris and Tirana.

Ismail Kadare is a prolific writer, having written a collection of poetry, essays and short stories. His books have been translated into several languages; in 1992, he won the Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca and in 1998, he was the first Albanian to be presented with the prestigious French Legion d’Honneur. In 2005 he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize and in 2009 he won the Prince of Asturia Award of Arts. He has frequently been a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Palace Of Dreams or Tabir Sarrail has been translated into several languages. It was first published in Albania in 1981 and in English in 2008. In 1982 the Hoxha government banned the book for indirectly attacking the communist regime. The Palace Of Dreams is considered Kadare’s masterpiece and the one among all his books he is pleased to have written.

The story is set during an unspecified period of the Ottoman Empire reigned over by a sultan in an autocratic Balkan realm having Albania as its centre. Many years before, the country’s early sovereign created an establishment called Tabir Sarrail or The Palace Of Dreams. This bureaucratic institution is still operating when the novel begins several years later.

The Palace Of Dreams’ primary purpose is to go through all the dreams the empire’s citizens submitted. Several employees studied, analysed and interpreted them to select the Master Dream to be presented to the sultan each week. That is the one dream chosen by the experts that could be vital for the future running of the empire and helps its functioning. However, great caution is required to ensure that some prefabricated dreams used politically to influence certain state decisions are detected and reported.

The reserved, meek young protagonist, Mark-Alem Quprili, has a double-barrelled name; the first name is western, the second one is vaguely Muslim, and his mother’s family name Quprili refers to the Albanian three-arched bridge. Mark-Alem comes from an illustrious privileged family. His uncle, the vizier, finds him a position in the palace of dreams to secure the family’s interests from within against the governing authorities. Because the uncle says to his nephew: “The Tabir Sarrail had recently been playing a more important rôle in matters of State … Whosoever controls the ‘Master Dream’ holds the keys to the state”. Throughout history and at various times, the Quprili ancestors were at the head of the empire, which brought them misfortune often because they were redoubtable and mistrusted.

Working in the palace of dreams, Mark-Alem finds himself like a cog in a big wheel, a nightmarish world with mazes of umpteen dark, gloomy corridors, locked, unmarked doors, whispers and footsteps sound. A Kafkaesque universe of civil servant bureaucrats cut off entirely from the real world.

Despite his boredom and lack of interest, Mark-Alem endeavours to take his work seriously; nonetheless, he fails to detect the dream submitted to him twice in which several indications were targetting his family, that he overlooked and consequently will harm the Quprilis before they resurface again, like a phoenix from the ashes, taking their revenge and becoming mighty.

In the story’s surreal atmospheric, perplexing world, the author describes in simple and yet powerful language and through casual remarks and innuendos his grim perception of an oppressive dictatorial administration referring to the then Enver Hoxha regime in Albania. A competent, skilful accomplishment of anti-despotism and exploitation.

Ismail Kadare’s Palace Of Dreams is also reminiscent of the English writer George Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen-Eighty-Four novel, which demonstrates the outcome of the despotism of a society run under tight repressive supervision of people’s behaviour inside the society.

Kadare uses fables and history in his books, as he also did in The Siege (which we read and discussed in our Book Club in 2012) as a shield against the repressive authorities. He masterfully interlaces remote historical times, folk stories and realities in his books in a convincing way, letting the reader reach his own interpretation of what is behind the story’s message. The totalitarian regime understood Kadare’s message targetting Hoxhism, which was why the novel was banned upon publication.

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Author:
• Friday, February 24th, 2012

Ismail Kadare was born in Gjirokastër in Southern Albania in 1936, into a non-religious family. His father was a civil servant and his mother was from a wealthy family. He went to primary and secondary school in Gjirokastër followed by language studies at the University of Tirana in the faculty of history and philology where he obtained a teaching diploma in 1956. He continued his studies at the Maxim Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow until 1960.

Kadare was a member of the Albanian parliament from 1970 to 1982, but after some strife with the authorities in 1975 over a politically satirical poem, he was not allowed to publish any of his work for three years. He was also accused by the president of the league of Albanian Writers and Artists of intentionally avoiding to write about politics by writing mainly about history and myths. This was missing the point that Kadare preferred to use these means as an allegory to tackle the current political issues without fearing the repercussions.

Kadare, who is an eminent figure in Albania since the sixties, sought and obtained asylum in France before the fall of communism in his country. He stated at the time that: “Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible…The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship”. Since 1990 he lives both in Paris and Tirana.

Kadare is a prolific writer. His first collection of poetry was published in 1954 and his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, was published in 1963. He has also written essays and short stories.

His most recent book, Ghost Rider, was published in 2011 and his novels have been published in more than forty countries. In 1992 he won the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca and in 1998 he was the first Albanian to be presented with the prestigious French Legion d’Honneur. In 2005 he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize and in 2009 he won the Prince of Asturia Award of Arts. He has frequently been a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In Albania The Siege was first called The Drums of Rain, (the title later given to the French edition) but was at last published in 1970 in Albanian under the title The Castle, at a time when Albania was still under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. The English version, called The Siege, was published in 2009.

The story which takes place in the early fifteenth century, is of an imaginary siege of an unknown Albanian fortress besieged by the Ottoman Turkish army during the time of George Castrioti. Historically, George Castrioti, known as Skanderbeg, meaning Lord Alexander or Iskander Bey by the Turks, has been the national Albanian hero who bravely fought the mighty Ottomans during the peek of their strength for more than twenty years, when they were the most feared army of the time. He stood as the fierce saviour of Christianity against Islam. It was the confrontation of two cultures and two different religious beliefs, the crescent against the cross, the nowadays so-called: “clash of civilisations”. The historical fact is that after Castrioti’s death in1468, Albania was defeated and became part of the Ottoman empire and is today a predominantly Muslim European Country.

In The Siege, Tursun Pasha, the commander in chief of the Ottoman army, is commissioned to encircle the Albanian fortress which stands amidst fields, assail its people and subjugate them. His fate depends on the success of this mission. He’d better be successful or else commit suicide to make amends for his defeat. As the Quartermaster says to Saruxha: “If he doesn’t win this campaign, his star will dim for good… I am sure of it. If he is beaten, the best he can hope for is banishment for life. As for the worst… The Quartermaster drew a line with his forefinger under his throat”. Tursun Pasha never confronts Skanderberg whose presence is implied in various parts of the novel. He hardly appears in the arena but is acting behind the scenes through his fighters.

Before every new chapter, there are two pages narrating the viewpoint of the non-characterised besieged. Otherwise the whole story is related from the Turks’ angle by several characters, the nameless Quartermaster General in charge of the logistics, the engineer Saruxha, the architect Giaour, the credulous and nervous historian-chronicler Mevla Celebi, the poet Saddedin, the campaign doctor Sirri Selim and the Pasha’s harem who joined the campaign but whose members are kept confined to their tent and guarded by a eunuch.

The story of The Siege, published in 1970, seems to be meant by the author (and for those who can read between the lines) as an indirect representation of the difficult times the Albanians are going through. It was during the rule of the totalitarian, Enver Hoxha and the threat of the Soviet Russians, who were at Albania’s threshold in Czechoslovakia, during the cold war period.

The author, in his novel, describes masterfully and in great detail the brutality and bloodshed in wars, also all the intricacies of a campaign of this magnitude and all that it involves. He portrays with great authenticity the psychology of the invaders and the besieged in this war of attrition: the sustained attacks by the relentless Turkish army and the steadfastness of the stoic Albanians who will not be subdued.

Although it’s an historical fact that the Ottomans ended up conquering Albania, does that make victory perpetually on the side of the technologically advanced and the brutal? Not always according to the story, which goes against historically verified truth. The author wanted to prove an ambiguous point which is not clarified. Maybe out of patriotism and pride or implying that the Enver Hoxha regime, no matter how powerful, will come to an end one day.

The Siege is an engrossing novel, well written with a lot of food for thought, especially when looked upon from today’s perspective.