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Books

Albanian literary icon Ismail Kadare revisits ‘home’

1 February 2020

9:00 AM

1 February 2020

9:00 AM

The Doll Ismail Kadare, translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson

Harvill Secker, pp.166, £12.99

Ismail Kadare is a kind of lapidary artist who carves meaning and pattern into the rocky mysteries of his native Albania. Born, like his frenemy the Communist dictator Enver Hoxha, amid the blank-faced mansions and feuding clans of the ‘stone city’ of Gjirokaster, the novelist has always framed the terror, secrecy and confusion of the regime as a family affair.

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