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The Palace of Dreams

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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.

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.

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

This book is a testimony to the imposition of power on people - in this case, the controlling (and crushing) of potentially rebellious dreams against the State. Kadare does a good job of creating the tension that reverberates throughout the book. I was gripped with suspense and fear everytime Mark-Alem walked in silence through the dark, creepy corridors that stretched for miles on end. That really gave me the chills. Kadare also has a good grasp of his words. The interpretation of the book (originally in French) is superb - very easy to read, and manages to deliver the story in good style. The story is engaging, and it draws you into the world of the Tabir Sarrail, where reality and dreams are indistinguishable. It makes you want to finish the book in one sitting.

This is a small masterpiece of a book. "The Palace of Dreams" is the place where the dreams and nightmares of all the citizens of the Ottoman Empire are obsessively examined by experts, looking for omens and potential threats to the state. This is the premise of this provocative, hallucinating voyage into the absurdity and ultimate terror of totalitarian power. "The Palace of Dreams" is a powerful examination of fear and of the way it eventually turns a man's soul into stone, into another lifeless fragment of a monstrous sacrificial stone. A sinister allegory. A unique book. Don't miss it.

Since reading Alan Paton's 'Ah But Your Land Is Beautiful', I have wondered whether I would read another author with a similarly spare and powerful narrative style. This is the first book I've read by Ismail Kadare and I'm eagerly looking forward to reading his other works. In certain books, because of plot tension and so on, one is impelled to 'devour' the story; Kadare forces the reader to slow down and re-read pages, not just for the beauty of the prose but because of the many layers at which the book can be read. It is almost sufic in intensity.

Mr. Kadare carefully builds tension and terror around his central character, Mark-Alem, from the endless corridors among which he fearfully wanders to the seemingly inexplicable promotions; from his family's tentative hopes about his new job to their tentatively expressed fears about it. The Tabir-Sarrail itself, Palace of Dreams, is expertly realized as a monstrous character.

Do read this book.

_Palace of Dreams_ relates the story of a young man from a powerful Albanian family who goes to work in the Ottoman bureaucracy. He spends his days analyzing dreams submitted by the empire's citizens, searching for clues about the government's future. There are elements of Kafka here: although his subject is political intrigue, Kadare isn't interested in relating a detailed plot, but rather with summoning a strong sense of unease in the reader. As a result, this is a thriller in the best sense of the word. An extraordinary tension supports the whole novel, and the passages which are meant to scare or shock us succeed quite admirably. This is a gripping book, which I would recommend to anyone: probably the most universally accessible work Kadare has produced.

The Palace of Dreams is more than a "read." Kadare is Virgil accompanying Dante into Purgatory, and we are there. Be prepared to walk peacefully into a chilly bewilderment of silent corridors, past closed doors, suddenly seeing a group of grave whisperers disappear around a shadowy corner. On your desk find truth and untruth sifted together in a fine mix of papers that may have lethal consequences and may not. It is a puzzle to the very end. It is a puzzle at the end and beyond. This is the most compelling and morally instructive writing I have read in four years.

As he did in his Man Booker International Prize-winning novel THE SUCCESSOR, Ismail Kadare portrays in THE PALACE OF DREAMS an autocratic, vaguely Islamic, East European state controlled by rumor, innuendo, superstition, and irrationality. The instrument of power this time, however, is not the whim of an all-powerful dictator who induces a constant state of fear and uncertainty in his subordinates, rivals, and subjects. Rather, it is a post-Freudian dream factory, a monolithic and opaque institution that serves the state by interpreting the nightly brain-ramblings of its citizenry. The purpose of the Tabir Sarrail, the Palace of Dreams, is simple: to sift through the thousands of sparsely remembered dream descriptions in search each week of a Master Dream, the one and only dream that will be presented as meaningful to the Sovereign. Presumably, that dream and its accompanying interpretation convey important information for running the state - for making key decisions, warning of impending crises or revolts, or just predicting the future. Of course, no one can say for sure how that Master Dream gets selected by the Palace's director, how its particular interpretation is chosen, or whether the presented dream in fact ever took place or was simply fabricated for political purposes.

Kadare centers his tale around a most unlikely hero, Mark-Alem Quprili, the ineffectual scion of a long-powerful clan of ministers, viziers, and businessmen. As his given name suggests, Mark-Alem lives in a world half-Western and half-Islamic, with a last name of Albanian origin that translates as bridge. Not just any bridge, it seems, but an Albanian bridge of three arches (another of Kadare's books is titled THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE) in which a murdered man was walled up inside its foundations. A family meeting decides Mark-Alem's future - he will take a position at the Palace of Dreams. The young man enters his job naively, completely unaware that he is being positioned in the Tabir Sarrail to protect his family from the inscrutable machinations of government. He begins with a job in the Selection department, one of dozens if not hundreds who sift through the week's collected dreams to choose those worth further consideration. In surprisingly short order, he is promoted to the Interpretation section, which analyzes those sent from Selection for meaning, including culling out the relatively small group that might become the week's Master Dream.

The Palace of Dreams is an immense and forbidding structure, filled with endless corridors and locked doors. Each new experience there is for Mark-Alem a waking nightmare - wandering lost through empty and unmarked hallways, hearing faraway footsteps, seeing the dead bodies of citizen-dreamers who were brought in for interrogation being spirited away. Over time, however, the dreams whose readings fill Mark-Alem's days become more real than life outside the Palace. How, after all, can real life possible compete with the wild imaginings, the sheer magic and impossibility, of dreams? Mark-Alem finds that he has even stopped having dreams of his own. As his responsibilities increase and his hours lengthen, his life becomes a dream state within a dream world in a dream-processing factory. It is not until he attends a dinner at his Vizier uncle's home that reality, and the machine of State, impinge murderously on Mark-Alem and shock him awake. He discovers the truth of his situation in the Tabir Sarrail and how he failed to protect his family. Yet almost simultaneously, the attack on the Quprili's is answered with a political counterattack that will forever change Mark-Alem's life. This benign butterfly of a man becomes a powerful instrument of the State and its evil affairs, and he even dares to dream his own dreams again.

Ismail Kadare's prose is powerful in its very sparseness. His setting is Balkan, but the time period is deliberately unspecific, vaguely 19th Century in feeling. THE PALACE OF DREAMS progresses easily and quietly, but the story feels like a dream itself, a nightmare world of uncertainty, unnamable fears, and evil portents. We experience through Mark-Alem a ceaseless sense of confusion, of being constantly lost and unable to find our way out. Various newspaper reviewers likened this novel to Kafka's THE TRIAL and THE CASTLE (the obvious choices), Borges's labyrinth, Canetti's AUTO DA FE, or Auster's THE MUSIC OF CHANCE. For me, the analogues were Plato's cave, Saramago's THE CAVE, and Solzhenitsyn's THE FIRST CIRCLE. Regardless, THE PALACE OF DREAMS is a chilling, almost nightmarish story of a world where reality is governed by irrational belief in the quasi-religious predictive power of dreams. It is a forbidding world in which government is run by superstitious faith, where decisions of life and death are divorced from the reality-based world. If this sounds disturbingly familiar to a certain modern Republican Presidency (replace "dreams" with "anti-intellectual, anti-Science, Christian fundamentalism"), so be it. And to think that Kadare first penned this novel in Albanian in 1981. Perhaps he had a dream himself?

THE PALACE OF DREAMS is a first-rate tale, an unsettling horror story that mirrors modern life too closely for comfort. Ismail Kadare deserves a wider audience in the United States. His work in eminently readable, and he has much to tell us.

Mark-Alem works in the world's most bizarre and apalling institution ....the palace of dreams

it was found to harvest all men dreams in an ultimate place , then set them aside , sift them ,scrutinize them , so that the empire's (fortune)- along with its tyrant's- can be told.

Mark-Alem begins to rise in the ominous positions of this ghoulish society , to become its head ...alas he becomes haunted with that terrible obsession of being ( crushed ) by the vile bureaucracy that he is running , like ( it ) devastated many people before ...

The palace of dreams - the stygian kingdom - is a metaphor for ( thought police ) ... a police that supported - and supports - political dictatorships in the entire world ...

Do not this horrific detailed allegory reminds us of the status of each and every human individual at the end of this barbaric era ?