Ismail Kadare: 15 books

The Man Booker International–winning author of Broken April and The Siege, Albania’s most renowned novelist, and perennial Nobel Prize contender Ismail Kadare explores three giants of world literature—Aeschylus, Dante, and Shakespeare—through the lens of resisting totalitarianism. In...

An epic novel of war from the Man Booker International Prize–winning Albanian author who “has been compared to Gogol, Kafka, and Orwell” (The Independent). Ismail Kadare’s The Siege dramatizes a fictional fifth century assault by the Ottoman Army on a Christian fortress in the Albanian...

Author Ismail Kadare is often touted as a strong and beloved potential recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 2005 he won the inaugural International Man Booker prize Kadare's fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny . . . But his books are of more than just political...

**A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice "Erotic, paranoiac and lightly fantastical." —The Wall Street Journal "Ismail Kadare's readers are astonished every year when the Nobel committee overlooks him. . . . A Girl in Exile, published in Albanian in 2009, may...

From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize and author of A Girl in Exile. “One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language” (The Wall Street Journal). June 28, 1389: Six hundred years before Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic called for the repression of the Albanian...

From Man Booker International Prize winner Ismail Kadare comes a dizzying psychological thriller of twisted passions, dual identities, and political subterfuge. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the war in the Balkans, The Accident closely documents an affair between two young lovers.On a rainy...

In 1958, Kadare was selected to pursue his writing and literary studies as a graduate student in Moscow at the prestigious Gorky Institute for World Literature. Twilight of the Eastern Gods is Kadare's fictionalized recreation of his time spent at this "factory of the intellect," a place created to produce...

This intimate look at the people and culture of war-torn Albania, as seen through the eyes of a child, is a “thoroughly enchanting novel” (John Updike).   Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit....

“An extraordinary portrait of tyranny” from the winner of the Man Booker International Prize and author of A Girl in Exile (The New York Times). Psychologically incisive and impeccably crafted, Agamemnon’s Daughter tells the crushing story of passion shattered by a heartless regime. Once...

In a small town at the foot of the northern highlands in Albania, a decade after the fall of the Communist regime, the harsh blood-for-blood law of the fearsome Kanun mountain folk is emerging from hibernation, like everything else that was forbidden under the fifty years of Communist rule. Mysterious...

It is 1943, and the Second World War is ravaging Europe. Mussolini decides to pull out of his alliance with the Nazis, and withdraws the Italian troops occupying Albania. Soon after, Nazi forces invade Albania from occupied Greece. The first settlement in their path is the ancient stone city of Gjirokastër,...

A powerful political novel based on the sudden, mysterious death of the man who had been handpicked to succeed the hated Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? That is the burning question. The man who died by his own hand, or another’s, was Mehmet Shehu, the presumed...

Two destinies intersect in Broken April. The first is that of Gjor, a young mountaineer who (much against his will) has just killed a man in order to avenge the death of his older brother, and who expects to be killed himself in keeping with the provisions of the Code that regulates life in the highlands....

An old woman is awoken in the dead of night by knocks at her front door. The woman opens it to find her daughter, Doruntine, standing there alone in the darkness. She has been brought home from a distant land by a mysterious rider she claims is her brother Konstandin. But unbeknownst to her, Konstandin...