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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The ultimate novel of the blood feud in Albania,
By Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Broken April (Paperback)
Blood feuds have existed in many parts of the world throughout history. The USA, with its Hatfields and McCoys, is no stranger to the custom either. The practice seems to run most deeply in remote, mountainous areas where tribal societies cannot provide a universal system of justice to cover everyone. The code of the blood feud develops to handle murder cases. Nowhere (that I ever heard of) did the system evolve into such an intricate traditional code of laws as in the mountainous highlands of Albania. There, the Kanun, or Law of Lek Dukagjini spread throughout the lawless region now lying in northern Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, a region that largely maintained its own identity and customs throughout the centuries-long period of Turkish rule, to emerge in 20th century Europe with the blood feud still flourishing.Kadare, Albania's premier writer, has written a vivid, dark novel that not only captures the details of highland Albanian life in the 1920s, but also shows the ultimate tragedy for a society that allows murder to follow murder, inexorably and unchallenged. A couple from the more urbanized, less-traditional lowlands go for their honeymoon into the highlands, riding in a horse-drawn carriage--a great luxury for the highlanders. The man, a writer, tends to romanticize the blood-soaked traditions of his country's remote regions. At the same time, Gjorg, a young highlander, who has killed a man in revenge for his brother, is given a month's truce before he in turn will become a target. He can expect a bullet at any moment after April 17, hence his April is broken into safe and dangerous parts. His fate intersects with those of the literate travellers and the book comes to its inevitable ending. For a novel that explores seldom-seen territory, written in a terse, but beautiful style, please read this book. Since the end of communism in 1991, the blood feud has returned to Albania, still largely lawless in its mountain areas. This book is no fossil.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a jarring experience,
This review is from: Broken April (Paperback)
How can a people live without an organized government? The northern Albanians seem to have found an answer, but it's not necessarily one we'd want to emulate. Throughout years of cursory rule by the Ottomans, King Zog, and Hoxha's Communists, the highlanders have observed only the law of their ancestors: the Kanun of Lek Dukagjinit (an excellent translation of this is available on Amazon). At the center of this law stand two concepts: hospitality and honor. Both are protected by a system of revenge killings. A killing demanded by honor, however, demands a revenge killing in return, and the feuds spiral out of control until whole families have been eliminated.It all sounds very romantic in the abstract, but Kadare resists the temptation to exploit this quality. His novel is based on the contrast between a young man obliged by the Kanun to kill another man, and a young married couple from Tirana, urban intellectuals who have come to the north for their honeymoon and to study the blood feuds. The tension between their two points of view (the northerner who feels trapped within the Kanun, and the southerners who see it as a marvelous bit of local color) drives this novel. Kadare is a wonderful writer, and this is one of his finest efforts. It's also a very dark story, and its concerns can seem a bit obscure to the non-Albanian reader. Ultimately, though, this is probably the best novel I've ever read about a culture wholly alien to my own.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
dark, intense, subtle and masterful.,
By
This review is from: Broken April (Paperback)
Kadare is a writer of subtlety and irony, capable of powerfully saying what he thinks without ever actually saying what he thinks. I guess you must learn to do this when you grow up in a strict communist dictatorship. The first and main character of the book, Gjorg, steps into the ages-old tradition of bloodfeud, and begins the ending of his own life. Kadare masterfully tells this from Gjorg's viewpoint in a dark, terse but poetic style that feels as desperate as his character. Then the irony kicks in, as he introduces a writer and his new wife, who are from the city, who is fascinated with Northern Albanian culture. Bessian is wrapped up in the terrible romance of the blood feud, and a conscious reader must identify him/herself in this curious character, wanting to watch, both fascinated and horrified, as people destroy each other for the sake of tradition. And the to turn the screw one notch further, we briefly meet the Blood Mark, the government officer responsible for tracking the blood killings and receiving the blood tax. A look inside his almost-normal mind is eerily frightening, as death becomes life and life becomes death. I'm afraid I'm too un-Albanian in thought-patterns, however, to grasp the climactic motion of the novel. I don't want to give away the end of the novel, but I must say it seems to build and build towards a particular event... and then just narrowly miss that event. It is difficult to identify the climax of the novel, and difficult to be satisfied with the progression. Maybe this is simply because my mind is quite Western, and my sense of things is different. But I'm not totally unexperienced at reading non-Western works... Anyway. A wonderful, if dark and intense, novel. An education, as well.
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