Doruntine [Paperback]

Ismail Kadare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 1998

...a magical parable of love, death and the power of familial bonds. --Stephen Salisbury, New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

Review

A magical parable of love, death, and the power of familial bonds. (Stephan Salisbury New York Times Book Review )

A master storyteller. He has a knack like Isak Dinesen's for creating a long-ago atmosphere for a story essentially timeless. (Chicago Tribune )

Fiction laced with a sophisticated literary self-awareness. (Christian Science Monitor )

The great modern Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare, has given us a masterpiece, Doruntine, at once romantic and contemporary in spirit. Here is a spell-binding new literary mode, with its suspense, its alertness, its suggestiveness, its intensely local flavor—an age-old legend transformed into a splendid fable. (Alain Bosquet Lettres Etrangeres )

The great modern Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare, has given us a masterpiece, Doruntine, at once romantic and contemporary in spirit. Here is a spell-binding new literary mode, with its suspense, its alertness, its suggestiveness, its intensely local flavor—an age-old legend transformed into a splendid fable. (Alain Bosquet Lettres Etrangeres )

A major international novelist. (Herbert Mitgang New York Times )

Kadare's is a voice unlike any other in contemporary fiction. The Nobel can't come a moment too soon. (Kirkus Reviews )

One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language. (Wall Street Journal )

One of contemporary fiction's greatest prose lyricists. (Philadelphia Inquirer )

Ismail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture—its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer. (Professor John Carey )

Ismail Kadare's fiction has been compared with that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Certainly he induces that same ironic double-take in his readers, by means of the child's magical view of life that is larger than most adults realize. (Leonie Caldecott New York Times Book Review )

Writing like this is hard to stop quoting, it is musical not only in rhythms, but in its most elemental perceptions. (Nation )

Albania's most valuable export: the novels of Ismail Kadare. (Ken Kalfus Village Voice Literary Supplement )

Albania's Kadare is probably the premier writer of fiction to have emerged from the Balkan countries since Bosnian Nobel-winning novelist Ivo Andric. (Kirkus Reviews )

A great writer. (Booklist )

Kadare's prose glimmers with the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Los Angeles Times Book Review )

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books (June 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561310328
• ISBN-13: 978-1561310326
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,511,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kadare with flaws is still among the best, June 30, 2002

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Doruntine (Paperback)

Doruntine is set in the 11th or 12th century and is based upon an Albanian legend. The story of Doruntine is relatively simple - the only daughter of a large family marries a Bohemian man i.e. a two week trip home at best; the brother most attached to her gives his bessa that he will come for her when she needs to travel home; all nine brothers die in a plague infested war; three years later her dead brother comes for her, takes her home; she and her mother die.

Kadare places this legend into the investigative hands of a local official Stres. In his investigation Stres is forced to realize the elusiveness of truth, the "necessary" dishonesty of authority, his own relationship with Doruntine and wife, the forward thinking ideas that made the brother troublesome. Stres ultimately opts for bessa, that elusive honesty and social contract.

Don't start this book if you don't have time to read it straight through; it is riveting. However, it does have two flaws. First, in the context of a dead brother transporting Doruntine the comment that only Jesus Christ has arisen from the dead is used repeatedly; Lazarus appears to be forgotten. Secondly, while careful rereading might clear the confusion, I was left with a feeling of inconsistency between Stres' family life timeline and that of Doruntine's marriage. Perhaps I ought to knock a star off for these problems but Kadare is an exceptional writer - I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a book you should read, January 2, 2002

By 

Alfred Lela (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doruntine (Paperback)

I'm challenged by idea of reading "Doruntine" in English. I red it in albanian over and over and over again. An interesting to perfection albanian myth is transformed into a superb literature. Kadare has made all the right choices working towards these albanian-balkanian themes. The legend of Doruntine brought home by her dead brother Kostandin is a literature itself. Kadare walks further giving us a masterpiece.It is a political book too.The church, the police service, the prison bring to us the "lost empire of Arberia" then a totally christian domain. Forget the ideas; you should read the book because of style.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Are myth, illusion, and dream greater than the State ?, November 4, 1999

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Doruntine (Paperback)

Doruntine, who married in far off Bohemia, suddenly appears at her mother's deathbed. She says she was brought by her brother. Only thing is, he's been dead for 3 years. This is a challenge to the Church, all powerful in that era, which seems to be Norman-ruled Albania of the middle age, where Catholic and Orthodox doctrines competed. So far, only Jesus Christ had risen from his grave. A 'policeman' Stres, is assigned to make sense of the incident. While this novel may have resonated in Communist Albania of the 1980s, with its intricate "Dance of the Doctrines" and underlying family and clan rule, I felt that, just as a novel, it left something to be desired. I failed to care what the outcome of the case would be. Some scenes are excellently depicted, but compared to most of Kadare's work, this novel is weak perhaps because it is a one-theme novel. If you are looking for good novels, Kadare is one of the best writers alive today, but this isn't his best by a long shot.