Book description
28 June 1389, the Field of the Blackbirds. A Christian army made up
of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Romanians confront an Ottoman army.
In ten hours the battle is over, and the Muslims possess the field; an
outcome that has haunted the vanquished ever since.
28 June 1989, the Serb Leader Slobodan Milosevic launches his
campaign for a fresh massacre of the Albanians, the majority
population of Kosovo.
In three short narratives Kadare shows how legends of betrayal and
defeat simmered in European civilisation for six hundred years,
culminating in the agony of one tiny population at the end of the
twentieth century.
Ismail Kadare, born in 1936 in the mountain town of Gjirokaster, near
the Greek border, is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. Since the
appearance of
The General of the Dead Army
in 1965, Kadare has published scores of stories and novels that make up
a panorama of Albanian history linked by a constant meditation on the
nature and human consequences of dictatorship. His works brought him
into frequent conflict with the authorities from 1945 to 1985. In 1990
he sought political asylum in France, and now divides his time between
Paris and Tirana. He is the winner of the first ever Man Booker
International Prize.
