“Agamemnon’s Daughter” is negligible. But Kadare is a great writer, and “The Blinding Order” in particular is not to be...
A miscellany showcasing earlier work by the Albanian author (Elegy for Kosovo, 2000, etc.) and recipient of the first Man Booker International Prize.
Unfortunately, Kadare’s considerable gifts are absent from the title novella, a precursor to his 2003 novel The Successor. Its unnamed narrator, a journalist for the nation’s Broadcast Services, weighs his unexpected special invitation to the annual May Day Parade (a perk reserved for Socialist Party faithful) against his lover Suzana’s announcement that her father’s sensitive position—as chosen successor to Albania’s moribund dictator—obliges her to end their relationship. Nothing happens, literally, as the narrator ruefully compares Suzana’s decision to Greek king Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, intended to placate gods directing the Trojan War’s outcome; tries to distinguish his own situation from those of friends and acquaintances who have compromised and betrayed in order to ensure their political survival; and clearly foresees the fate awaiting him. This turgid, redundant semi-fiction is far less interesting than the stories that accompany it. “The Great Wall” (1993) presents a plan to repair the Chinese landmark from the (oddly similar) viewpoints of a Chinese official and a barbarian member of the invading army of “Timur the Lame” (aka Tamurlane). It’s a wry Borgesian explication of the complementary permutations of conquest and survival. Even better is “The Blinding Order” (1984), set in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century, when a sultan’s decree sentences “carriers” of “the evil eye” to be blinded. This brilliant metaphor (and premise) speaks volumes about the brutality and illogic of paranoid regimes (and is, incidentally, linked through its main subplot to Kadare’s fine 1981 novel The Palace of Dreams). Superbly plotted, charged with bitter black humor, it’s a masterly parable worthy of comparison with José Saramago’s Nobel-anointed fiction.
“Agamemnon’s Daughter” is negligible. But Kadare is a great writer, and “The Blinding Order” in particular is not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2006
ISBN: 1-55970-788-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
IN THE NEWS
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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