Ismail Kadare. (2018). A Girl in Exile: Requiem for Linda B. Catapult.

Ismail Kadare. 2018. A Girl in Exile: Requiem for Linda B. Catapult.

Ismail Kadare, A Girl in Exile: Requiem for Linda B. Catapult, 2018.

Ismail Kadare. A Girl in Exile: Requiem for Linda B. Catapult, 2018.

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Kadare, Ismail
   • bioText: Ismail Kadare is Albania's best–known novelist and poet. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. He was awarded the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005, the Jerusalem Prize in 2015, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2020.
     John Hodgson studied at Cambridge and Newcastle and has taught at the universities of Prishtina and Tirana. This is the sixth book by Ismail Kadare that he has translated.
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A Girl in Exile

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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 rekindle the worldwide hopes.” —The New York Times Book Review
During the bureaucratic machinery of Albania’s 1945–1991 dictatorship, playwright Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. A girl—Linda B.—has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession.
He soon learns that Linda’s family, considered suspect, was exiled to a small town far from the capital. Under the influence of a paranoid regime, Rudian finds himself swept along on a surreal quest to discover what really happened to Linda B.
“At a time when parts of the world are indulging nostalgia for communism, Kadare’s novel confronts the infuriating impossibility of art in an autocratic, anti–individualist system.” —The Washington Post
“A Girl in Exile confirms Kadare to be the best writer at work today who remembers—almost aggressively so, refusing to forget—European totalitarianism.” —The New Republic

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
   • content: "Ismail Kadare's readers are astonished every year when the Nobel committee overlooks him . . . A Girl in Exile, published in Albanian in 2009, may rekindle the worldwide hopes."
2. • premium: False
   • source: The Wall Street Journal
   • content: "A Girl in Exile is erotic, paranoiac and lightly fantastical."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Washington Post
   • content: "Kadare's mellifluous fever dream is a portrait of madness: the madness of the Stalinist state and the madness of men and women in the clamp of the state's machinations . . . At a time when parts of the world are indulging nostalgia for communism, Kadare's novel confronts the infuriating impossibility of art in an autocratic, anti-individualist system."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Los Angeles Review of Books
   • content: "While common sense says that no artist can overhaul a country's literature singlehandedly, Kadare has done so . . . A Girl in Exile is the work of a historic talent who is still at the peak of his power. It confirms Kadare to be the best writer at work today who remembers--almost aggressively so, refusing to forget--European totalitarianism. Kadare tackles Albania's specific strangeness with a ferocious rigor that would feel scientific if it were not for the haunted, haunting humans he writes into being."
5. • premium: False
   • source: New Republic
   • content: "A Girl in Exile is the gripping account of a playwright's tragic struggle with the effects of his creative work, as understood through political upheaval, narrative interchangeability, and a magnetic relationship . . . Beautifully, the text addresses the cruelties of dictatorship."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Chicago Review of Books, The Most Anticipated Fiction Books of 2018
   • content: "Set among the bureaucratic machinery of Albania's dictatorship, this compelling novel evokes the paranoid nature of life and love under surveillance."
7. • premium: False
   • source: The Millions, Most Anticipated: The Great 2018 Book Preview
   • content: "Kadare structures the novel like a psychological detective yarn, but one with some serious existential heft . . . A strong study of the ease and banality of human duplicity."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Independent
   • content: "Powerful, empathetic, at times harrowing . . . executed with an elegant combination of horror, absurdity, indignation, and other-worldliness . . . A chilling, humane and strangely beautiful work."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
   • content: "A brilliant novel that captures the horrors of a totalitarian regime."
10. • premium: False
    • source: John Banville, Financial Times
    • content: "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."
11. • premium: False
    • source: John Sutherland, The Times
    • content: "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."
12. • premium: False
    • source: Guardian
    • content: "Melodrama, tragedy and myth illuminate the relationship between individual and state in a fine novel from the great Albanian writer."
13. • premium: False
    • source: Booklist
    • content: "Kadare is frequently mentioned as a Nobel contender, and his chances should only be enhanced by this odd and powerful novel."
14. • premium: False
    • source: Kirkus Reviews
    • content: "Myth and dream, memory and repression, all converge as the novel illuminates the essence of art in totalitarian Albania. An author respected throughout Europe should reach a wider American readership with this subversive novel."
15. • premium: False
    • source: Library Journal
    • content: "The novel effectively conveys the era's drabness and repression, providing a timely sense of the constraints imposed by authoritarian regimes . . . A good treatment of repressive politics."
16. • premium: False
    • source: Publishers Weekly
    • content: "Comparisons to Kafka are inevitable, but there's also some Joseph Heller here. Kadare successfully renders Big Brother . . . A poignant narrative about exile."
17. • premium: False
    • source: World Literature Today
    • content: "Ismail Kadare is one of the most lauded writers-in-translation in the English language, certainly one of Europe's most important writers, and virtually the singular representative of Albanian culture to the anglophone world . . . The novel is by turns a probing exploration of the strict censures on everyday life--from which coffee shop one drinks at to the friends and lovers one has and the art one makes--under a totalitarian regime, and by turns epic in its connections among the present of life under Hoxha in the...
18. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      October 15, 2017
      Kadare (Twilight of the Eastern Gods, 2015, etc.) subverts the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a parable of totalitarianism. The prizewinning novelist published this in his native Albania in 2009 and set it within "the dictatorship of the proletariat" that ruled his homeland for much of the latter half of the 20th century. The protagonist is a playwright who has been summoned for questioning by the Party Committee. He figures his newest work has fallen under scrutiny by investigators, who would be "looking for hostile catchphrases, counting the number of lines given to negative characters as against positive ones, looking at the fingerprints on the manuscript to find out if anyone suspicious had read it." Instead, it seems, the issue at hand is an entirely different matter: a young woman has committed suicide, and in her hands was a book the writer had inscribed to her. He tells the committee he had never met her but had inscribed the book at a reading, at the request of another young woman, with whom he had proceeded into a tumultuous relationship. The playwright had suspected that this woman might be a spy for the government, and now he becomes increasingly concerned about his suspected involvement in the death of a woman he never met. The novel spirals deeper into surreal mystery as it explores the relationship between the two women, the impetus for the suicide, and the impact of the investigation on a play the protagonist is in the process of writing. "Better if you don't know," an investigator responds when the playwright asks of the circumstances surrounding the suicide. In his obsessive reflections, the playwright somehow becomes Orpheus, whose artistry can bring his wife back from the dead, but only if he keeps from looking at her as he leads her out of Hades. Myth and dream, memory and repression, all converge as the novel illuminates the essence of art in totalitarian Albania. An author respected throughout Europe should reach a wider American readership with this subversive novel.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

19. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      November 1, 2017
      

      This translation of a 2009 work by award-winning author Kadare is set in Communist-era Albania, circa 1990. A playwright/author, who is having an affair with a young woman he's met at a book signing, is called in for questioning--not, as he fears, about Party disapproval of his recent play but about his potential involvement with another young woman he's never met. She had been detained, along with her entire family, in government-imposed exile in the provinces and recently committed suicide. Though the novel effectively conveys the era's drabness and repression, providing a timely sense of the constraints imposed by authoritarian regimes, it might have been more interesting had it focused on the regime's impact on the two young women. Though Kadare briefly sends his imagination in that direction, the playwright/narrator ultimately reduces the women to literary tropes and makes the story all about himself, with the usual surveillance fears and interrogation scenes typical of Cold War novels. VERDICT A good treatment of repressive politics but a missed opportunity for fuller involvement; Kadare's name will attract some readers.--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

20. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      November 20, 2017
      A middle-aged writer’s oblique connection to a young suicide is the avenue by which Kadare (The General of the Dead Army) provocatively explores the intrusive Albanian state apparatus of the 1980s. When the Party Committee summons writer Rudian Stefa, he worries artistic censors complained to the regime about his latest play. If not the play, perhaps he should worry about shoving his girlfriend Migena, or accusing her of being a spy. The regime’s invasiveness becomes increasingly clear as the tragedy of the dead girl—who grew up in exile—unfolds and connects her to Rudian; Migena asked him at a signing to autograph a book “for Linda B.” The authorities have Linda’s copy of the book and her diary, which reveals an obsession with Rudian and provides clues to a desperate plan that involves Migena. Comparisons to Kafka are inevitable, but there’s also some Joseph Heller here. Kadare successfully renders Big Brother, and, though Linda’s hopeless scheme strains credulity, this is nonetheless a poignant narrative about exile.

21. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      December 15, 2017
      Albanian writer Kadare's (The Fall of the Stone City, 2013) latest is overt in its critique of totalitarianism. Waiting for his newest play, a controversial ghost story, to be cleared by the censor's office, dissident writer Rudian Stefa is called before the Party Committee about his connection to Linda B., a young suicide who had a signed copy of his book and a diary etched with his name. Linda, from the same remote town as Rudian's moody, mysterious lover, Migena, was a political internal exile, forbidden to visit the city she came to adore through Rudian's writing. Although he never met her, could he be responsible for her death? In considering an act of dramatic and perhaps supernatural resistance accomplished by two girlsdaughters of socialism, as the phrase wentin a godforsaken Albanian province, Kadare offers new takes on his signature traits, the reanimation of old myths and the melding of fantasy and realism, of the grim and the surreal. Kadare is frequently mentioned as a Nobel contender, and his chances should only be enhanced by this odd and powerful novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

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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 rekindle the worldwide hopes.” —The New York Times Book Review
During the bureaucratic machinery of Albania’s 1945–1991 dictatorship, playwright Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. A girl—Linda B.—has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession.
He soon learns that Linda’s family, considered suspect, was exiled to a small town far from the capital. Under the influence of a paranoid regime, Rudian finds himself swept along on a surreal quest to discover what really happened to Linda B.
“At a time when parts of the world are indulging...

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Girl in Exile Requiem for Linda B

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