This novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, and translated by David Bellos, draws heavily on two years that he spent at the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow from 1958. Albania was a client state of the USSR but Kadare’s stay in Moscow fell during the Khrushchev era, at a time when Albania was distancing itself from its protector; its leader, Enver Hoxha, disapproved of Khrushchev’s liberal reforms. The book focuses on the “treacherous drabness” of the student halls at the Institute, full of writers being groomed to write literature that glorifies communism but who are also paranoid and disaffected.
The experience sharpened Kadare’s dissident views – which he was forced to hide deep within metaphors and legends. Here, the legend of Kostandini and Doruntina, which embodies the Albanian belief in keeping your word even after death, is explored and played out on Moscow’s gloomy streets. While the state smear campaign against Boris Pasternak (after he won the Nobel prize for literature) rumbles on, the book springs to life most vividly when the narrator is with a girl. His sexual desire shines brightly against the dull torpor of the cold war.
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