Лучшие произведения Исмаиля Кадаре

Через двадцать лет после окончания Второй мировой итальянский генерал отправляется в Албанию, чтобы забрать останки убитых солдат из числа своих сограждан. В компании сварливого священника, под дождем и мокрым снегом, герой приступает к раскопкам местности, некогда служившей полем ожесточенной битвы, а ныне ставшей могилой солдат, личности которых еще предстоит установить. Сражаясь за успех своего безнадежного предприятия, генерал обнаруживает, что у него появился конкурент в лице военного из Германии, прибывшего в Албанию со схожей миссией. Обстановка накаляется, и итальянскому генералу вскоре придется ответить за преступления своей…

1958. In a dorm room in Moscow, a young writer is woken by the sound of angry voices on the radio. Through the fog of a hangover he hears the news that a novel called Doctor Zhivago has earned its author the Nobel Prize. There is uproar. The author, Boris Pasternak, faces exile, the press hound him and demand that he refuse the award. A few days earlier the young writer found a copy of this book – could those simple pages really be so dangerous? Based on Ismail Kadare's own experience, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a portrait of a city, a story of youthful disenchantment and a reminder of the incredible importance of the written word.

A haunting yet humorous evocation of a society dangerously trapped in its past. 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. Their purpose, they say, is to show how Homer's epics might have been culled from a verbal tradition. But the local Governor believes its an elaborate spying mission and arranges for his own spy to follow them.The two dedicated scholars realise only too late that they have stumbled over an ants' nest. This simple tale by Albania's most eminent and gifted novelist serves to lift the…

When the construction of a bridge built to link the Balkans to Europe is repeatedly and mysteriously sabotaged, an old ballad starts making the rounds at local taverns. The bards sing of a legend – a woman immured in a castle wall to prevent it from falling. Some say the bridge is being damaged by local ferrymen, others blame the vengeful water spirits. But this is a town where terror and superstition reign and a solution must be reached. So it is decreed: a willing person must be plastered into