The Palace of Dreams [Hardcover]

Ismail Kadare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

A sinister totalitarian ministry called the Palace of Dreams recruits Mark-Alem to sort, classify, and interpret the dreams of the people in the empire, seeking the ""master-dreams"" that give clues to the empire's destiny. 10,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First published in 1981 in Albania, where it was immediately banned, this hallucinatory novel unfolds as an extended parable about an all-controlling dictatorship that monitors even the subconscious lives of its citizens. The setting is 19th-century Albania, a backwater of the Ottoman Empire, which in Albanian novelist/poet Kadare's tense allegory represents the modern totalitarian police state. Mark-Alem works in the bureau of sleep and dreams, which collects, sorts and analyzes tens of thousands of dreams duly reported by an abject, compliant populace to a state that avers that "the interpretation of a dream, fallen like a stray spark into the brain of one out of millions of sleepers, may help to save the country or its Sovereign from disaster . . . " Assisted by his powerful uncle, the Vizier, Mark-Alem enjoys a meteoric rise in the dream-interpreting bureaucracy, but his failure to decipher one politically significant dream gives the state an opportunity to lash out against his aristocratic, patriotic family, leaving behind a pile of corpses. The author of four previous novels published to acclaim in Europe, Kadare found asylum in Paris two years before Albania elected its first noncommunist government.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Palace of Dreams is the most powerful bureaucracy in the Ottoman Empire, for here "all the dreams of all citizens without exception" are interpreted, classified, and stored. Once a week a Master Dream is chosen to reveal "the true state of the Empire." Into this infinitely treacherous labyrinth steps Mark-Alem, whose naivete brings injury to his ancient Albanian family and--paradoxically--propels him to the pinnacle of power. Kadare is Albania's best-known writer, and his new novel shapes an elegant metaphor for that country's late dictatorship, which he fled in 1990. Recommended for most collections of literary fiction.
- Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 205 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688111831
• ISBN-13: 978-0688111830
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,800,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "They 're Selling Postcards of the Hanging....", January 31, 2003

By 

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

Dreams flow into Istanbul from all corners of the Ottoman Empire to be sorted, interpreted, stored, or acted upon by an enormous bureaucracy of faceless figures. Wheels operate within wheels: nobody really knows what is going on except a few puppet-masters at the top. The innocent scion of a high, powerful family begins work in the Tabir Sarrail, that cavernous palace of endless blank corridors which, like Dr. Whos Tardis, is much bigger inside than out. Sinister goings on, always just out of sight, almost out of earshot. Mark-Alem learns as he goes. His meteoric rise may have ominous significance. Maybe not. He has to make sense out of the senseless. He has to give meaning to the meaningless. Interpretation is everything, but a wrong twist could lead to fatal disaster. Are his fellow workers in on some dark secrets that he has failed to decipher ? Or are they just as they seem, friendly and struggling ? The world of power dazzles and depresses simultaneously.

When is Ismail Kadare going to get the Nobel Prize ? I have asked this before. THE PALACE OF DREAMS is yet another masterpiece by this Albanian author. It has links to The Three-Arched Bridge, another of his great novels. While the tenor of THE PALACE OF DREAMS is entirely different from the latter work, they do the share the enviable quality of operating on several levels, which to my mind, always indicates the highest craftsmanship. The present volume resembles Kafka more than a little, perhaps also is reminiscent of Sartres play No Exit. At one level it is such a nightmarish fantasy, a bad dream played out in a couple hundred pages. At a second level, Kadare succeeded in writing a magnificent replica of the workings of secret security agencies within the administration of Communist era nations like Albania. Part terror, part nightmare, he sets his story in the 19th century Ottoman empire to avoid personal repercussions (the book was banned in Albania anyway). Anyone who ruled over the dark zones of mens lives wielded enormous power. Dream Palace or Sigurimi, the Albanian security agency ? It does not matter. By linking the protagonist to the Quprili family, a genuine Albanian-born dynasty of Ottoman officials and administrators, and to the recital of Albanian folk epics, Kadare ties the dream palace to actual history in a very clever way. The voice of the people must eventually be heard--it is only a question of when. This is a most clever book and Kadare fans should not miss it. If you havent started reading him yet, you could well begin here.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A dangerous ghost state, October 18, 2003

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Palace of Dreams (Paperback)

In Kadare's hallucinatory novel, the most important ministry in the country is the one where the dreams of all its citizens are interpreted. A monstrous bureaucratic organization collects those dreams and a monstrous herd of employees classifies and analyzes them. The interpretation of the apparently most important dream is presented every week to the sultan, because it could contain crucial information about the destiny of the country and the ruling families.
The whole country has really turned into a ghost state, where people perform ghost work: Absurdistan.

Of course, this macabre ministry is only a veil for the bitter power struggle between the powerful. A bad dream interpretation could create an opportunity to lash out at the other throne contenders with deadly consequences for the innocent common citizens. The for the common man seemingly blind fatality is in fact the result of a deadly fight for control and power between the mighty.

Kadare's novel, inspired by Enver Hoxha's Albania, is a masterful portrait of the totalitarian state, where real life is replaced by hallucinations. The government's most important role is to try to control even the dreams of its citizens. A dark nightmarish regime.

This highly political work is composed and reads like a thriller. A real masterpiece.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub, December 13, 2005

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Palace of Dreams (Paperback)

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

Ismail Kadare's "The Palace of Dreams" is a book that reads like Kafka as influenced by the painter M.C. Escher with a bit of "1001 Arabian Nights" thrown in for good measure.

Ismail Kadare is an Albanian poet and writer. He is also the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and was selected from a list of nominees that included Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Naguib Mahfouz, Milan Kundera, and Gunter Grass. The Palace of Dreams is one of his best known, many say best, work.

"Palace of Dreams" is set some time in the 19th-century in an Islamic-ruled Ottoman Empire that includes the Balkans (including Kadare's native Albania). The Palace of the title is a mammoth office building where the dreams of everyone in the kingdom are submitted for analysis. It is a Byzantine bureaucracy whose complexity is matched only by the dark, complex hallways and byways of the building itself. The Sultanate considers the dreams of his subjects to contain clues to the future. Like an oracle of Delphi, dreams are interpreted to predict plots against the Sultan or threat to the Empire generally. The interpretation of dreams is a powerful tool used to run the Empire and control its citizens and as a result the Palace of Dreams is the most feared agency in existence.

Into the Palace of Dreams steps a young new employee, Mark-Alem. Mark-Alem is a member of the Quprili family. The Quprilis are a powerful family of Albanian origin. For generations the family has produced high-ranking Viziers, the approximate equivalent of Cabinet Ministers, to the Sultan. Although a powerful family the Quprili's relationship over the years with various Sultans has been rocky and has been marked by purges and bitter in-fighting. The tenuous relationship between the Quprilis and the Sultan forms the backdrop of the story.

After Mark-Alem makes his way through a maze of corridors he is taken on as an apprentice. He quickly moves from a clerical position, sorting dreams, to interpreting them. Kadare's writing is very powerful as he traces Mark-Alem's path as an employee on the fast-track. One can feel the job beginning to overwhelm Mark-Alem's thoughts and actions. What seemed as unreal to Mark-Alem as an apprentice now seems commonplace. In a certain sense Kadare portrays vividly one person's descent into a claustrophobic, mystical hell where dreams are more real than reality.

At the same time renewed tensions between the Sultan and the Quprilis emerge. One specific dream involving a bridge in Albania built by the Quprilis hundreds of years ago quickly becomes the centerpiece of the plot. This same bridge played a critical role in an earlier Kadare novel, "The Three-Arched Bridge". Mark-Alem finds himself faced with analyzing this dream and the consequences of that interpretation drives the last third of the novel.

Palace of Dreams has been doubly-translated, first from Albanian to French and then from French to English. Despite that it felt as if I were reading the book in its original language. Entering Palace of Dreams was like entering a dream itself, one that quickly turns into a nightmare. As I read the description of Mark-Alem wandering, lost, through the hallways of a dimly lit Palace of Dreams I could feel the increasing despair welling up in Mark-Alem. The credit for that must be attributed to Kadare but with a significant nod to the translators who kept the writing both fresh and as disturbing as it appears to have been intended.

Kadare's The Palace of Dreams is well worth reading.

L. Fleisig