Book description
The bards who stopped at the inn near the riverbank were forever
being asked to sing the ballad of the three young masons, all
brothers, who were fated never to complete the building of their wall
until they had immured one of their wives in it.
In the year 1377, when the roadbuilders threatened to put the
ferrymen out of business by building a stone bridge to carry the
traffic between the Balkans and the rest of Europe, the legend was to
become a grisly reality.
What the builders completed of the bridge by day was destroyed by
night. Sabotage, said some. The vengeful spirits of the waters, said
others. But once a man was taken to be immured, once he was plastered
into a cavity of the first pier, the attacks on the bridge stopped,
the two banks of the river had a permanent link. The first troops to
cross the bridge were to be the vanguard of the Ottoman Turks
advancing irresistably into Europe.
Many have described the retreat of Christendom after the fall of
Constantinople, as Islam forced a passage westwards through the
Balkans towards the European heartlands. Seldom, though, has the story
been told so starkly, so hauntingly, as in this succinct fable of
conflict, terror, dissention and superstition by Albania's most
influential novelist.
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.
