General Of The Dead Army - Softcover

Kadare, Ismail

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860466443 ISBN 13: 9781860466441

Publisher: Harvill Press, 2000

Synopsis

This sweeping epic of post-war Albania was Kadare's first novel. Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general is dispatched to Albania to recover his country's dead. Once there he meets a German general who is engaged upon an identical mission and their conversations bring out into the open the extent of their horror and guilt, newly exacerbated by their present task. As they descend from the callous trivialities of their gruesome business, past and present, to suffering self-disgust, the author gives us glimpses of the lives of the people whose graves they are unearthing.

About this title

Review:

The General of the Dead Army, Ismail Kadare's meditation on the consequences of war, is a hugely moving account of duty and loss. It is 20 years since the end of the Second World War and an Italian army general is sent to Albania to search again for the bodies of those who lost their lives in the campaign. He is armed with maps, lists, measurements, dental and other records. He tours the countryside organising digs and disinternments and, as he tries to find the dead sons of forgotten families, he wonders at the sense, and scale, of his task. He discusses and argues with the curt Italian priest who is accompanying him. He finds his footsteps followed, sometimes anticipated, by a fellow general who is also looking for bodies; the bodies of his German countrymen. He struggles with the Albanian countryside, weather, labourers who work for him and peasants who watch their work. And he fights the despair that grows as the size, scope and, ultimately, the hopelessness of his task becomes ever more apparent.

Kadare's plaintive novel is a consistently heartfelt lament to all those who have died and been effected by war but it is also a beautiful work displaying the skills that make him one of the great modern European writers. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

""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)

""Kadare's first novel caught on in the West as nothing out of Albania had in living memory"" (Observer)

""Kadare is a novelist of dazzling mastery" PAUL BINDING" (Independent)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvill Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1860466443
• ISBN 13: 9781860466441
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272