A Girl in Exile - Hardcover

Kadare, Ismail

3.47

892 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846558468 ISBN 13: 9781846558467

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2016

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Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in the Independent

Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. An unknown girl – Linda B. – has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession. Rudian remembers writing the dedication at the request of Linda’s friend, who has since become his mistress but has now disappeared. He soon learns that Linda’s family, considered suspect, were exiled to a small Albanian town far from the capital, and that the girl committed suicide.

But what really happened to Linda B.? Through layers of intrigue, her story gradually unfolds: how she loved Rudian from a distance, and the risks she was prepared to take so that she could get close to him.

A Girl in Exile is a stunning, deeply affecting portrait of life and love under surveillance, infused with myth, wry humour and the chilling absurdity of a paranoid regime.

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Product Description:

Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. An unknown girl - Linda B. - has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession. Rudian remembers writing the dedication at the request of Linda's friend, who has since become his mistress but has now disappeared. He soon learns that Linda's family, considered suspect, were exiled to a small Albanian town far from the capital, and that the girl committed suicide. But what really happened to Linda B.? Through layers of intrigue, her story gradually unfolds: how she loved Rudian from a distance, and the risks she was prepared to take so that she could get close to him. A Girl in Exile is a stunning, deeply affecting portrait of life and love under surveillance, infused with myth, wry humour and the chilling absurdity of a paranoid regime.

Review:

"Powerful, empathetic, at times harrowing... executed with an elegant combination of horror, absurdity, indignation, and other-worldliness... A chilling, humane and strangely beautiful work" (Independent)

"[Kadare] captures the paranoid nature of life under constant surveillance...and produces an ironic masterpiece" (Daily Mail)

"Filled with striking images and conceits... a powerful Kafkaesque charge... Kadare’s imaginative intelligence ensures that it is chilling and intriguing" (Theo Tait Sunday Times)

"A compelling amalgam of realism, dreaminess and elegiac, white-hot fury. Kadare communicates with awful immediacy the nature of tyranny and the accommodations that those subject to it must make - as Kadare himself had to do" (John Banville Financial Times)

"The literature Kadare has produced in the face of obstacles lesser writers would find insuperable, is, genuinely, of world significance... Invites comparison with Milan Kundera's recent satire on Stalinism, The Festival of Insignificance. Both writers are favourites, year-in, year-out for the Nobel prize. Kadare will not damage his prospects with A Girl in Exile" (John Sutherland The Times)

"Coolly ironic writing, which traverses ominous themes of censorship and state control... Kadare masterfully conjures an atmosphere of paranoia... This powerful novel is a monument" (Francesca Wade Daily Telegraph)

"Melodrama, tragedy and myth illuminate the relationship between individual and state in a fine novel from the great Albanian writer" (Guardian)

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