Customer Reviews

Accursed Mountains

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

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

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.

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.

Keeping track of what foreign researchers or visitors write about Albania is one of my main interests since it provides an outside view of what is going in my home country.
However, the reading of "The accoursed mountains" was a total disappointment for me.
While the author is correct when he describes the Albanian towns and landscape, his generalizations on Albanian people are completely wrong. I would have had nothing against the author, had he given his personal impressions of the travel, but generalizing on Albanians way of thinking and behaving based on those 10 people that he met while traveling in Albania for a very short time is not fair.
I would say that the author, at least just in one page of this book, should have left aside his cynicism and hate against this "third world country' and should have demonstrated some respect for Albanian people that managed to survive 40 years of one of the most fearsome and cruel communist dictatorships in the Eastern Europe.

I feel ashamed that many readers will have this book as their first contact with Albania. If anyone wants to have an unbiased view on the Albanian people, please try to avoid reading this unrealistic book and refer to other sources such as Edith Durham or Noel Malcolm, which base their opinion on an extensive review of existing literature and provide informed conclusions about Albania and Albanians.

The author realy seems to be proud of himself that he has survived Albania. I agree that not everything in Albania is perfect, but who wants to read stories about how lucky the author is that he wasn't killed and that since WWII no other foreigners has visited a place. Sometimes, you have the impression that the author really believes that he is one of the first foreigners to visit the country and not to travel back in a coffin. The book is another example of writings about Albania only mentioning the bad points because these things sell better. There are other critical books about the country much more worth to be read (e.g. Post's Women in Albania).

Antonie de Saint-Exupery said "I have no right to say or do anything that deminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks about himself.
Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime".

Whoever appointed mr.Robert Carver to write a book about Albania,
must be satisfied with his work!
A great job he's done at telling the truth about Albania's Albanians and also a riveting job by making up stories about Albanians in general.

I am an Albanian,for example I have never been in Iceland, and if I had to write a book about Icelanders within a short time, you can imagine how accurate that book of mine would have been!!!

I must admit I found this book too offensive,too unfair but it is a book and books are meant to teach us something.Anything.And it is up to you dear readers what you're gonna learn from this particular book!!!

If mr.Robert Carver was appointed by whoever that is - to write another book about any other country I wish with all my heart to remind him of this adage "Two people stare from the same bar - one sees mud the other sees the stars".
And it is the STARS people are more interested than in the mud. Because stars are 'unreachable' while mud can be created anywhere!

And for the end mr. Robert Carver's books will always have a spare place in my bookshelf. He's a great writer!

As I began reading this volume, I was immediately put off by such statements as "..in Albania more or less nothing worked, nothing was available, and no one knew anything." or "duplicity and trickery were the currency of everyday life" or "Cynicism was intelligence, fairness stupidity." And to take a final, random example, "If there was one consistent trait the Albanians shared, it was to charge the foreigner the absolute maximum the market would bear." On top of such wildly general statements, the author allowed himself the use of such words as Wop and Froggy, expressing here and there his dislike of the strictures of political correctness. While not entirely disagreeing with that last point, I still don't like books that make use of such rubbish terms that add absolutely nothing to the topic at hand. So, I must say that I got off to a bad start with THE ACCURSED MOUNTAINS. I kept reading and now I am glad I did. In many ways the picture Carver draws is very accurate, and somehow, despite himself, he seems ultimately to like some of the people he meets. The further he was able to retreat into the past, the high mountains of the northern highlands where even the all-embracing Communism of the Hoxha years could not much penetrate, the happier he seems and the less likely to make sweeping negative statements. I have the ability to comment on his opinions because, strangely enough, I was travelling through Albania at exactly the same time he was--mid-1996---though not for as long. I did not have any contacts at all. The picture Carver gives of the economic situation is absolutely true--utter desolation, back to zero. As he had more political contacts, he could find out more than I did, but what he wrote rang very true to me. The politics of family, clan, and tribe had sprung back as if it had never been gone (it hadn't)and the words 'compromise', 'consensus' and 'practical program' seemed unknown. Where I disagree with Carver is in the nature of the Albanian people. Allowing for the two facts that a) the entire economy had totally collapsed and b)it was a Third World economy anyway, it was amazing to me how honest everyone was. In the weeks that I was there, nobody cheated us, only a couple minor attempts were made even to try, and desperately poor street vendors would return you the correct change even if you had understood "50" instead of "15" due to poor Albanian. Dirt poor people would insist on paying for your coffee, your drinks; hospitality was universal. Con-men existed, but primarily in the world of package tourism, which, despite Carver's denial, did seem to be getting a toehold at that time. Carver reports roadblocks where police extorted money from bus and van drivers every few miles (it seems). I travelled from north to south, east to west, on regular buses, quick vans, taxis, newspaper delivery vans, and the train, never finding even one instance of this, though wide travels elsewhere in the Third World make me aware of how common it is. Carver sees bandits on the road---oops, they are only a bunch of refugee kids. He almost gets shot on a desolate road but---oops, the pistols all fire at a target set up a moment ago. The Macedonian border was shut off but---oops, I went through it with no difficulty. I can easily share his feelings of anxiety--and equally shared the experience of being warned in America before leaving that Albanians were thieves, murderers, bandits, etc. But somehow my fears dissolved while his did not. If you don't mind living with those fears, despite the hospitality he received, the kindness of people who had next to nothing, but shared it with him, then you ought to read this book, ignoring some of the parts that try to make Albania sound much more horrendous than it is (or was in 1996). I share Carver's vision of the rising tide of desperate Third World people who are going to overwhelm the more organized countries in search of order and prosperity, thereby destroying what they came for. Albania's tragedy is yet another one, sending out floods of desperate people. There was no need to make it worse than it is.

Mr. Carver moves around Albania with the fear and distance typical of many western reporters who are uninterested in making a committment to understanding the local perspective. His western template is the perspective from which he sees and interprets the Albanians. In this sense, Mr. Carver's sense, they are a very bizzare people.

His contacts throughout the trip are with westerners, and in many cases missionaries. Missionaries, like the ones he describes, are also uninterested in making a committment to understanding the local perspective. Both the missionaries and Mr. Carver's stock and trade is finding "material" to exploit.

The one star is for writing: Mr. Carver is an artist. Unfortunately, his impressions of Albania were made from secondary accounts long before his arrival. His visit was to search for the data which would match his story.

Read anything by Mary Edith Durham to start seeing things from another perspective and to read from an author who respects her subject.

I am very sorry to say: The book did not keep to its promising ads. I am very disappointed to see a country and a people to whom I grew tenderly close to be dragged in mud deeper than the ditches beside some roads.

I was indeed admiring the powerful use of descriptive language - positively a strenghth of the author. Surely you have to pay respect to his attempt travelling to unknown country, with unknkown inhabitants, and unknown and strange language. Mr. Carver, did you, or not, learn that language? I did not develop an idea how advanced you are in Quhe Shqipe (Albanian tongue).

You destroyed your compelling description of what you experienced by attempting to judge, to weigh, to moralise! Poor Albanians, with such friends you don't need no enemies!

I married in 1994 a young lady from Tirana, and since then I was visiting Albania about two times per year. Alright, I did not make friends in that North as Mr. Carver was travelling, my major contacts are people from Tirana. Yes, these are two different worlds. However, I think I can justly say that I got a certain insight into the contemporary Albania. Thus, I cannot follow the conclusions as drawn in the book in question.

The biggest fault of the author is to take side of Sali Berisha, the previous heart surgeon and personal physician of the late dictator Enver Hoxha who then appeared as President of the new Republic Albania. How can a foreigner address the Prime Minister of any country as "jailbird" without any proof of that verdict? why is there no attempt to explain why Fatos Nano was imprisoned? Why doesn't he tell that there is another interpretation of the event when one Member of the Albanian Parliament badly injured a fellow-colleague from the opponent party. Carver just names that as politically motivated. There is another reason to be quoted: Just a personal settlement between enemy families. Yes, we see such deeds as, to be careful, strange, but that does by no means give us the right to see Albanians as minor to us, as unable for so-called democratic behaviour. No, Mr. Carver, murder, corruption and other crimes are the bitter normality in our allegedly high-developped West too.

That very Mr. Berisha still is attempting to jeopardise the slow steps of the new government towards normalisation. Wasn't it under Berisha's regime that people were badly beaten on open street amidst the city of Tirana, something that allegedly did not even happen during the long Hoxha dictatorship? Wasn't it the regime Berisha that ran the country even below ground as we all remember the break down of the pyramid systems in 1997? Wasn't it the regime Berisha that allowed a wide system of bribing, and through this destroy the look of the nice parks of Tirana by allowing obscure people build up obscure coffee and other shops?

Wasn't it that "jailbird" Nano who started with, and his successors who successfully continued to remove these tokens of personal greed and stupidness?

No, from personal first hand experience I cannot at all confirm the description of Tirana in 1996 as given by the author. The more I advanced in that book, the more I became upset; several times I was close to just dropping it without reaching to the end. It was a drag to finalise the reading. All the time I was asking: What does Robert Carver want?

Does he want to give us a traveller book: but why does he have to take questionable judgments probably given by his accompany without further research (at least I did not see any signs of such attempts)?

Does he want to give a political analysis and conclusions: but why doesn't he quote from reliable sources, or give any other proof of good journalistic research?

Does he simply want to drag down a fragile country in his Western (or British?)hybris?

No Mr. Carver, with that pile of paper titled the Accursed Mountains, you don't help Albania. You missed a chance both to gain reputation, and to open the hearts of the readers towards Albania. If you had only been stuck to your compelling description without giving away verdicts, you would have created a script worth to be listed amongst the best traveller books. However, for me you left but anger and disappointment.

Even with this review, I have given too much honour to a on one side superfluent print that does by no means contribute to understanding the most difficult situation of a poor, extremely beautiful country with proud, extremely hospital people who nevertheless do not yet stand together enough to lift their country out from the deep ditch of corruption, smuggeling and other crimes.

Readers who want to get an idea of Albania, please refer for instance to Edith Durham, or to Malcolm's huge work of quoting historical sources without attempting to take any side, a highly volume of a book called "A Brief History of Kosovo", and to his wide list of literature. Or even better: Pay yourself a visit to an interesting, beautiful country, and be generous not to comment on every piece of trash you may find, the lack of well-functioning infrastructure etc. Better bring in some money through your visit, thus giving a hand to a suffering people that shook of the yoke of heavy oppression and is striving to find connection to the rich West whom Albania wants to close-up, and we should help to help themselves.

Yours

Reinhard Grossmann, a man who is proud and delighted by being married to a fine Albanian lady, and forever indebted by the deep friendship of her, and now his, Albanian relatives and friends.

Dear friends. I'm an albanian guy and i lived there until a year ago and I know how it is. Some things that carver wrote are true, goverment mafia but what it's said about the people is totally untrue and very offensive against the albanian people. What about i tell the history of america by listing that two high school student killed 20 others and a guy killed and mutilate 6 people in a mc donald store.The problem is that a lot of people dont know about Albania and anything they read its interesting true and whatever.In albania maybe part of the goverment is corrupted (It happens in every post communist state) and a lot of corruption going on and maybe once in a while a group of people rise against the goverment armed (same as waco texas) and even the pay is only 100 $ for month, but a similar disgrace of the albanian people is ridiculos. (sorry for my english), So please don't beleive anything you read. Thanks With all respect Dritan Dilaveri tani@yahoo.com