The Three-Arched Bridge - Hardcover

Kadare, Ismail

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559703687 ISBN 13: 9781559703680

Publisher: Arcade Pub, 1997

Synopsis

In a parable based on the current situation in the Balkans, a novel by a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature tells of a fourteenth-century mason who believes he must sacrifice his wife to complete a bridge across Eastern Europe.

About this title

Review:

The year: 1377. The place: the Balkan peninsula. Here in Ismail Kadare's novel, The Three-Arched Bridge, an Albanian monk chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a great river known as Ujana e Keqe, or "Wicked Waters". If successful in their endeavour, the bridge-builders will challenge a monopoly on water transportation known simply as "Boats and Rafts". The story itself parallels developments in modern-day Eastern Europe, with the bridge emblematic of a disintegrating economic and political order: just as mysterious cracks in the span's masonry endanger the structure and cast the local community into a morass of uncertainty, superstition and murder, so the fast-changing conditions in the 14th-century Balkan peninsula threaten to overwhelm the stability of life there. Dark as the story itself is, Mr. Kadare's prose, skilfully translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson, is elegant, witty and deft. And with so many twists and turns in its carefully constructed plot, this political parable keeps the reader's interest to the very end.

Review:

"A vivid, macabre and wise novel" (New York Times)

"His ability to spin eerie parables out of a little-known national history makes his books an addictive pleasure" (Jonathan Romney Independent on Sunday)

"A compelling investigation into language and myth, politics and power, by the renowned, infinitely talented Albanian novelist" (Booklist)

"[Kadare] is seemingly incapable of writing a book that fails to be interesting" (New York Times)

"In Ismail Kadare's fictional worlds creation and destruction are entwined, and how he illuminates the human cost of their varied pairings is the source of his greatness as a writer" (Chicago Tribune)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Pub
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1559703687
• ISBN 13: 9781559703680
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184