The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania [Hardcover]

Robert Carver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999

In the spring and summer of 1996 Robert Carver made a remarkable journey through remote Albania. He travelled by bus, by foot, by mule and horse, staying with Albanians and sharing their grindingly poor lives. He met Vlach shepherds and village intellectuals, Tirana film-makers and Bektashi dervish babas, ex-Communist Special Forces officers and juvenile heroin smugglers, missionaries with jeeps and light planes, and ex-prisoners of Enver Hoxha who had spent 45 years in the Albanian gulag. His journey in this mysterious mountain land is recounted in this lively travel narrative, involving high adventure, danger and comedy alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The Accursed Mountains" have earned their sinister moniker in recent weeks. Across this formidable alpine border tens of thousands of refugees have straggled into Albania after being expelled from their homes in neighboring Kosovo. That the isolated villages of northern Albania should represent refuge at all is a superb irony, as Carver makes clear: Albania, long the poorest country in Europe, descended into near anarchy in 1997 when a pyramid scheme collapsed. Carver, a British journalist sporting a well-worn passport, visited Albania in 1996. His stunning account of his adventures is both enlightening and tragic. In the towns of southern Albania, Carver describes the pervasive despair of communities stripped of their intellectuals and leaders during the Communist rule of Enver Hoxha. Here, newly found democracy is a fraud and, by local standards, "cynicism [is] intelligence, fairness stupidity." The foreigner is seen firstly as a free meal ticket and secondly as a potential patron. But as Carver ventures further north, a deeper, more conservative mentality emerges, and he finds himself in an archaic, feudal world of tribal honor and responsibility. In the inhospitable mountain towns of Kukes, Bajram Curri and Valbona, banditry and vendetta killings are the main occupationsAand to step outside at dark without the accompaniment of a local or a gun is to invite death. It's into this remote corner of Europe, bloodied by innumerable family feuds, that the Kosovars have fled. Without the condescension common to Western observers of the Balkans, Carver offers timely and devastatingly poignant insight into a people and their culture. B&w photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

With the U.S. embroiled in a Balkan conflict on behalf of the besieged Albanians in Kosovo, this travel narrative is a timely as well as an engrossing experience. In 1996, Carver, a BBC reporter, traveled throughout Albania, including the remote, mountainous region where the borders of Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania converge. It was a stimulating but frequently chilling experience. Carver conveys eloquently the sense of a tribal society constantly operating on the edge of violence. Preteen shepherd boys carry guns without a hint of self-consciousness. Brigands make travel in rural areas a life-threatening gamble. Signs of the repressive Communist past are everywhere, yet Carver also encounters stirring signs of hope for an open, prosperous society. Of course, Carver traveled and wrote before the current explosion, but he provides us with immensely valuable insight into the culture of a volatile and fiercely independent people and the land they inhabit. Jay Freeman

Product Details

• Hardcover: 339 pages
• Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE; 1st Ed. edition (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719554594
• ISBN-13: 978-0719554599
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #875,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Take it with a 5 pound bag of salt., March 11, 2001

By 

Justin M. Parmenter (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Accursed Mountains (Print on Demand (Paperback))

I lived in southern Albania as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1995 to 1997.

Carver's account of travelling through that portion of the country in 1996 (the first half of the book) is accurate in its physical descriptions (shabby, decaying, desolate and beautiful), but otherwise leaves much to be desired.

First of all, Carver's inexperience shines brightly in his somewhat hysterical exaggeration of the danger of travelling in southern Albania. I took long trips by public bus about once or twice a month while I lived there (between Korca, Permet, Gjirokaster, Tepelena and Saranda as well as up to Tirana and back), and not once was the bus I was on stopped by armed bandits. Carver's comment that "it was obvious that there was an ever-increasing chance I was not going to get out alive" either shows his unreasonable paranoia or a desire to dramatize events and sell more books.

Another major problem I had with Carver's book was his sarcastic, mocking, condescending tone. Nearly every Albanian he meets is a liar, a cheat, or laughably naive. Carver misses no opportunity to show the reader how much more intelligent he is than the people he is interviewing: "I forbore from pointing out that he himself planned to pass himself off as an Englishman". I think most people who visit Albania with an open mind find the Albanian people to be very honest and generous. To be sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions exist in every society in the world.

Finally, Carver's use of the Albanian language in parts of the book makes it painfully clear that no Albanian editor reviewed the book before it was published.

While Carver's book is worth reading for nostalgic reasons--it will remind people familiar with the country of places they saw and experiences they had--it would be dangerously misleading as a first impression of the country. Clearly Carver went into the journey with a closed mind and an inability to trust anyone. If what he intended to do was impress with his awesome bravery and sell books, I would suggest that in 1996 New York City would have been a scarier place to be.

Justin Parmenter Peace Corps Albania (Permet) 95-97

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This Accursed Book, October 22, 2003

By 

Martha Grenon (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Accursed Mountains (Print on Demand (Paperback))

The first time I visited Albania there were no guidebooks available. I read some history books, but the most recent one available then was published in 1978.

The year was 1992 and the country had just opened up to foreigners. Living within swimming distance, in Corfu, Greece, from 1972-1974 had piqued my curiosity. At that time, no Americans were allowed to visit, due to the harsh policies of Enver Hoxha's severely Stalinist regime.

So my first trip to Albania was like jumping backward off a cliff: I had no idea what to expect until I landed. Once there, the beauty of the country and the generosity of the people blew me away. I am a photographer and in Albania I found my life's work, beginning a project to document the Albanian people, including those living in Kosova and Macedonia. Since 1992 I have spent almost a month each year in this region.

I had looked forward to reading Robert Carver's "The Accursed Mountains", but found so many inaccuracies and author prejudices that I could not possibly recommend this book to anyone seeking to learn more about Albania.

The author overuses such qualifiers as "reputed", "it was said", "widely believed" and "claimed". Was there no way he could have found out if these statements were true or not? The more I read of this book, the more annoyed I became. I was in Albania in 1996, the same year he wrote about, and it was hard to believe that we had traveled in the same country. Whereas he continually met "unsmiling" people wanting to rip him off, I had totally different experiences. Strangers invited me into their homes, fed me and put me up for the night-and refused to accept one lek for their kindness.

Some of his inaccuracies:

"Fifty thousand green card visas had been allocated to Albania on a lottery basis..." (p. 24):
50,000 is the total number of visas granted to all the countries allowed to apply, not just Albania.

"Maps only became legal in 1995...There weren't any for sale anywhere." (p. 29)
I was able to purchase a map of Albania at a kiosk in Skanderbeg Square in 1993.

"There was no driving test in Albania. You just paid the police $10 for a permit. Spectacular crashes were common." (p. 39)
Why not mention that, until 1991, most Albanians were not allowed to own a car? Wouldn't that be an interesting fact to impart?

"There was only one ship left [in Saranda]...a small rusted freighter" (p. 99)
That's strange, because, along with Durres and Vlore, Saranda is a major port and every time I've been there I've seen quite a few boats of all types in the harbor: Freighters, ferries that travel back and forth from Corfu, and fishing boats, among others.

"The police were out in force...collecting cash [bribes from bus drivers]" (p. 115).
I have traveled extensively on buses in Albania, and never was stopped for this reason.

"For Macedonia, you had to have a passport with no Greek stamps at all, or they wouldn't let you in." (p. 133)
Funny, but the Greek stamps on my passport have never kept me out of Macedonia.

"The US Treasury had apparently put five hidden raised serrations on each bill...to detect forgeries" (p. 150)
Please, can someone tell me when this was done?

"...my mistake was to risk taking a photo of the giant equestrian statue of Skanderbeg...Now is a bad time for people with cameras." (p. 157-162)
I have never had a problem taking photos anywhere in Albania. In pre-war Kosova, yes; the Serbs liked throwing their weight around. But in 1996 I was working on a project concerned with the fate of political prisoners in Albania and was able to photograph in former and current prisons and other places that would have been forbidden during the Hoxha regime.

"If a foreigner got a cab it cost $50 [to go to Rinas Airport]." (p. 328)
I have never paid more than $20, either coming or going from Rinas, until 2003, when the lek became based on the euro instead of the US dollar.

What bothered me most about this book was the author's treatment of women. It's obvious that he cares very little for feminists. However, he has no problem in describing the size ("enormous") of a woman's breasts, or lack thereof. He meets two "professional feminists" in Bajram Curri and gives them "no more than a 50-50 chance of getting to Tirana unviolated." It's as if he hopes something bad will befall these women. He tries to track them down in Tirana:
"...when I enquired at the various aid agencies no one had ever heard of them...All sorts of people were disappearing without trace in Albania that summer." (p. 267)
As if he really cared-or as if that were really happening.

The above quotes are taken from the hard cover version published in 1998. If you plan on traveling to Albania, or merely want to learn more about this strange and beautiful country, don't waste your money on this book. James Pettifer's "Blue Guide" is so much more useful. Edith Durham's "High Albania" and Lloyd Jones' "Biografi" are more informative about the Albanian people.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Northern Albania, June 20, 2002

By 

Shortcake (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Accursed Mountains (Print on Demand (Paperback))

Although at times I felt Carver's criticism, or rather sterotypes/generalizations, of Albanians were a bit harsh, I also found a great deal of truth in them. As someone who has lived and traveled extensively in Northern Albania (where the book is set) I can identify Carver. Like the author and many non-albanians that have spent time there, I developed a love-hate relationship with the country (pardon the cliche). I think he provides as objective a critique and response to his travel as possible while being emotionally involved with his subjects. Many readers (some of them Albanian) have criticized
Carver for the negative impressions that he gives of the country. My response to that is that Albanians are one of the proudest people I have ever meet and have a great deal of trouble admitting that corruption, poverty, and a great deal of violence exist within their country. Don't get me wrong, I love the country and the people. Things have changed since Carver wrote the book, some things have improved, some have got worse. The violence exists, it's still there and in many ways has intensified. I would reccomend this book to anyone who is mildly interested in the country or its history. However, remember that while reading it that many of the problems that Carver recounts exist in American and Western European Cultures....and, much like the Albanians we don't want to own them. As another reader points out, many of the words and sentences in the book are in Albanian, Italian, and Greek which didn't bother me as I have a working knowledge of the languages (and admittedly, he should have had an italian and albanian publicist look over the book, because there are several errors) I feel that it adds a great deal to the book, but may be intimidating to someone who doesn't understand these languages.