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Three-Arched Bridge

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This is one of the many books written by the great Albanian author Ismail Kadare. Kadare, who fled Albania's communist government in 1990, crafts intricate novels that address various Balkan issues, with a specific eye towards Albanian situations. Albania needs all the help it can get, as it is virtually ignored by the rest of the world. Every Kadare novel I have seen mentions he is short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature. I can see why; his novels, even in translation, are stunning works of symbol, imagery, and insight. I suspect that Kadare is one of literature's best kept secrets. What a shame. More people should read Kadare and share in the joy.

"The Three Arched Bridge," written by Kadare in the early 1980's, is a complex, multi-layered examination of Albania on the eve of the Ottoman invasion of the 14th century. Some of the horror of the story comes from knowing what happened in real life; the Ottomans arrived and didn't leave for five centuries, leaving behind a people with no connections to the outside world and little development to fall back on. Even worse, the Ottomans converted the majority of Albanians to Islam, further alienating the Albanian people from Christian Europe.

The story is couched as a history of the bridge built over the Ujama e Keqe River (translated as "Wicked Waters"). The writer of this journal is a Christian monk named Gjon, who acts as a translator to the local Albanian nobility. During the construction of the bridge, all sorts of sinister activities take place: foreigners arrive to build the bridge, the bridge is sabotaged, and a gruesome sacrifice in which a local man is plastered into the bridge takes place. During the construction of the bridge, the Albanian nobility fight amongst themselves while the Ottoman threat looms in the distance.

This is a grim story, full of drama and suspense. The nobility can never get their act together to unite and protect Albania against foreign threat. Even the family of the man plastered into the bridge fight amongst themselves for his estate. This disunity serves to weaken Albania and invites foreign conquest. The bridge represents many things: Albania as a bridge between Europe and Asia, the bridge between two ages, the old Medieval Europe and the emerging mercantile Europe, or even the dominance of foreign influence over the Albanian people. I think Kadare used the river to symbolize Albania. When the foreigners come to build the bridge, they spread mud from the riverbed all over the place. This is exactly what foreign powers did in real life; they drew up borders and left Albanian people scattered all over the region. With this intrepretation in mind, there are numerous other examples that emerge in the book.

Whatever the symbolic implications of this book, it is a great read. Kadare is dramatic without ever drifting into soap opera, and he creates characters with great depth in a minimum of words. If he keeps writing his awesome tales, I'll keep reading them. Give this one a chance; you will like it immensely.

The monk Gjon Ukcama, narrator of this rain-swept tale of the 14th century Balkans, says at one point, "...like all the affairs of this world, this story was both simpler and more involved than it appeared." This sentence could sum up the book. In one way, you can read it as a simple tale of how a bridge was built; beginning with medieval machinations, certain unforeseen setbacks, a sacrifice, and ultimate success. A second approach to the novel is to look at it as a little-known historical period brought to life through a legend-like tale---the decline of Byzantium, the subsequent rise of many small principalities in the Balkans together with the ever-rising crescendo of Ottoman power from the East, the new commercial combines directed from the Italian states and other countries further west. A third way of looking at THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE is to think of it as an allegory of Albanian history, showing Albania as one of those many small countries to which history "happens" without their having any say-so. In a fourth way, this is a tale about change in any period of human history. Can there be major changes without someone paying a steep price ? A person here, a social class there, an entire way of life over there....Kadare's story move with dark inevitability. Finally, you can read this novel as being about life and death: people struggle to bridge the gap, but the two worlds--of the living and of the dead---remain separate. The legend of an old Albanian bridge tells us this. We can't penetrate further.

A Christian monk, writing in the 14th century, might have seen the Turks as a threat, though animosity between Rome and Byzantium was worse than between Islam and Christianity. That is not to say that everyone at the time did see them like that. Many Christian peasants of southeastern Europe preferred to live under the less-rapacious, better-organized Ottomans. Many even gladly converted to Islam. So, although the Turks are portrayed as menacing in this novel, even as symbolic of death and disaster, I would like to point out that Albanian history has been re-written in the 19th and 20th centuries to suit those who opposed the decayed Turkish rule four centuries after the initial conquests. We are still dealing in legends, in other words. Kadare does not vary from nationalist history, which has to be seen for the legend it is. Other than that minor criticism, this is without doubt a five-star book. My only question is---when is Kadare going to get a Nobel Prize ?

Taken at face value, The Three-Arched Bridge is a story about the building of a strategically important bridge in 1377 as the Ottoman Empire expanded into southeastern Europe in the dying days of the Byzantine Empire. The local people do not welcome the change, in particular the `Boats and Rafts' company that ferries travelers back and forth across the Ujana e Keqe (`Wicked Waters'). Construction of the bridge is sabotaged, but by whether by human means or by `naiads' or water nymphs is subject to debate. It appears the bridge may fail altogether until an old myth of walling up a woman in the wall of a castle comes to a twisted reality when one of the masons is `immured' in the bridge.

Kadare's narrator, Gjon, is a local monk with a skill for languages who serves as translator at various key meeting. The monk exhibits a sharp eye for detail. He travels nears an encampment of Turks and returns greatly fearing their advance. They are foreign in worship, dress, and song (Their music is `hashish dissolved in the air').

Kadare's writing entrances the reader. In a way that this reader found reminiscent of Flannery O`Connor, once the book has been begun, it must be finished. It's been called `strange, vivid, ominous' by Patrick McGrath in the NYT Book Review and I can't do better than that. A sense of foreboding, if not outright dread lingers over the pages.

Kadare's story seemingly contains an analogy, but what it is, is not obvious to the Western, or perhaps simply non-Albanian reader. It has been suggested that the analogy is to the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the book was originally published a decade earlier in Albania in 1978, although it was not published in English until 1997. Others have suggested a resonance with the Kosovo-Serbia conflicts and that rings truer because of the long history of that conflict (the great Kosovo battle that Serbs tout occurred in 1398 just 12 years after the story of the bridge.). The simpler answer is that the book is a story about the history and mythology of the clash between the Ottomans and the Byzantines, Islam and Christian, Turks and European set a crucial time and place in that interaction.

Kadare himself is a controversial and enigmatic figure. He published books in Albania under the eye of dictator Enver Hoxha, but then fled to France in 1990 just when the regime was collapsing. His claim to dissident status is hotly debated. Moreover, English versions of his books have suffered in the past from being twice-interpreted: first from Albanian to French and then from French to English. The Arcade Publishing edition, however, was translated directly into English from Albanian.

Whatever you decide the analogy is or think about Kadare, his writing is arresting. Give The Three-Arched Bridge a try and see for yourself. Very highly recommended.

I never heard of Kidare until I ran across a review of this book in the NY Times. I am glad I was introduced and look forward to reading his other works. This was a special read; deceptively simple prose, characters, themes and storyline. (Isn't it the simple things that are the best?) The book is loaded with religious imagery; the narrator, a 14th century monk, the three-arched bridge, the designer and master-builder. As in all good literature the setting transcends the particular to the universal. The pre-reformation setting mirrors the world in which we live in today. The novel tells the story of old-money (the boats & rafts, co.) and the inherent old way of doing things versus progress (the bridges & roads, co.) and its inherent changes. Over all this looms the State, both old (the liege Count) and the new (the expanding Ottoman Empire), threatening to undue everything. Intermingled with this struggle are the roles of superstition, religion and myth. Wonderful stuff!

Kadare consistently puts out fantastic novels, and this one is no exception. In brief chapters, he is able to illustrate what most writers can't in works twice as long. It tells the story of a polyglot monk in ancient Albania,and the eventual transformation of the economic and social systems of the day. The book also provides a rare glimpse into old albanian(or in this case,"Arberian") history. Short on words,but not on meaning.

The Three-Arched Bridge is a brief yet wonderful read. Kadare is a master writer who wastes not a single word throughout the novel. The historical backdrop and Kadare's simple yet elegant prose turn a simple story - one about the construction of a bridge - into one with many levels of deeper meaning.

The year is 1377, the narrator is a monk named Gjon, and the place is an indeterminate area of Albania bordering the Turkish Ottoman Empire through which, over the years, have passed multiple armies of Crusaders heading for Jerusalem, followed later by defeated stragglers heading back to Europe. The particular locus of this story is a ferry crossing point on the river called Ujana e Keqe, or Wicked Waters, clearly a strategic point in the movement of peoples and troops between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. For ages, the only way to cross the Ujana has been by raft, piloted for a fee by a taciturn old humpback working in the employ of a firm called Boats and Rafts.

Life had gone unchanged in this place for as long as memory could trace, until one day a stranger falls into an epileptic fit at the ferry crossing, his arms flung wildly toward the water. An itinerant fortune-teller witnesses the event and claims that it is a sign from God that a bridge should be built at this spot. Three weeks later, two strangers mysteriously appear before the local lord, the count of the Gjikas, proposing the construction of a toll bridge from which the count will receive a portion of the proceeds. The count agrees, and plans proceed to build a three-arched bridge despite the fears of the locals and the certitude of the old woman Ajkuna that the river waters will not be tamed and the bridge is nothing more than the devil's backbone. Once the bridge construction begins, however, troubles follow that seem almost certainly to be the result of sabotage, presumably sponsored by Boats and Rafts. Regardless, the locals see evil omens in these troubles, perhaps the work of naiads and water nymphs revenging the insulted river.

At about the same time, Monk Gjon spends time talking about Balkan legends with one of the bridge builder representatives and happens to mention a wall that demanded a human sacrifice in order not to fall. According to the legend of the castle of Shkoder, three brothers, all masons, were building the walls, but every night, their day's work was destroyed. A wise man told them the wall required a human soul, so the brothers agreed to sacrifice one of their brides to be sealed into the castle wall. The sacrificed wife offers up a curse: O tremble, wall of stone, As I tremble in this tomb." Several days later, a ballad begins to be sung in the local inn, but the "wall of stone" has become a "bridge of stone" and the story gradually evolves into a legend that must be fulfilled. Not long after, a local mason named Murrash Zenebisha who is suspected of the sabotage is found dead, immured in the bridge with only his face and neck showing, his eyes still open. Work on the bridge continues apace without further disruption, and it gradually displaces the ferry (whose humpbacked operator soon dies of old age). Of course, Murrash Zenebisha will not be the last death accorded to this bridge, this area, or this country - as Monk Gjon observes, "the future seems to me pregnant only with terrible disasters."

Kadare tells this story with a grim fatalism, using the educated monk as the arbiter of causes and effects. Throughout, the monk suggests that events are being engineered by the interested parties, that epileptic seizures, weakened bridge supports, and ballads of water spirits and human sacrifices are primitive forms of truth manipulation and the propaganda that will become endemic to this area in future centuries. Of course, the bridge itself is metaphorical on several levels: as the connector of Europe with the Asian continent, as a precursor of war and conquest through its ability to advance armies, as a symbol of the Balkans themselves as such a bridge between the continents, and as a symbol of technology and change. The ancient highway through Albania is being bought up, one piece at a time, and refurbished to promote trade and commerce. The bridge over the Ujana e Keqe is of a piece with this modernization, the replacement of water transit by roadways and bridges. However, like all technology, fears of change must be overcome, old ways must be set aside, and (often) a price must be paid as a result of its impact on human life. Monk Gjon, observing the finished bridge, remarks that "human confidence, fear, suspicion, and madness were nowhere more clearly manifest than on its [the bridge's] back." The three arches themselves may reflect a Christian Trinity, but they can also be seen as Europe on one side, the Balkans in the peaking middle, and Ottoman Turkey/Asia on the other side.

In THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE, Ismail Kadare has masterfully employed the grim legends and history of Albania and the Balkans to create a macabre and captivating parable applicable to modern times. As he did with THE SUCCESSOR and THE PALACE OF DREAMS, Kadare demonstrates once again that he deserves a place alongside Eco, Saramago, Calvino, and Kundera.

I loved the different symbols in the book. For example, Abdullah wanting to marry the Albanian girl. Although her parents rejected the offer, she had to eternally suffer being referred to as "the Turkish bride." Kadare wrote a very flexible book -- you can look at it in so many ways. Did I come upon some subtle hints of Kadare's nationalism? Yes, but the truth is that the book wouldn't have served its purpose otherwise. It was interesting that in the end it was not a woman, but a man, that ended up being immured; quite the opposite from the legend. Kadare is very eloquent in his descriptions. One that stuck to mind, very humorous in a Faulknerish type of way, was when they kept plastering the dead man's body with (what I think was) cement, the narrator -- the monk -- and the bystanders were so in shock/awe at the sight in front of them that it wouldn't have made a difference if the men started cementing them, as well.

If you're passionate about balkan history and literature appeals to you also, this is a book you shouldn't miss. All in all, it's a very nice introduction to Kadare for whoever is not familiar with him, although a more entertaining one would have to be by reading his other book, "Doruntine."

Narrated in the first-person by a monk named Gjon, THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE is an allegorical tale about the building of a bridge across a river, the Ujana e Keque ("Wicked Waters"), in 1377 in Albania (sometimes called Arberia in the novel). The central event in Gjon's tale is the immurement of a local young man, Murrash Zenebisha, in the structure of the bridge. Late-medieval Arberia is a region in which legends, ballads, imprecations, and betrayals proliferate, and in a twist on one of the most revered legends, Murrash Zenebisha is sacrificed (voluntarily?, or is he murdered?) and his body incorporated into the bridge, and then plastered over so that his white face stares out at the world, in order to save the bridge from mysterious forces that are working to bring it down. Not long after it is finished, the bridge becomes the site of bloodshed, in the first local skirmish with marauding Turks.

The three-arched bridge was a radically new development in Arberia. It was built to supplant a ferry enterprise, to the wonder and consternation of many. But, as with other changes in this feudal world that seem so momentous at first, most people eventually adapted to the bridge. There is one looming development, however, about which the monk Gjon cannot be sanguine or philosophic: the encroachment of the Turks (the Ottoman empire) upon the Balkans. "I saw Ottoman hordes flattening the world and creating in its place the land of Islam. * * * And our music, and dances, and costume, and our majestic language, harried by that terrible '-luk,' like a reptile's tail * * *. And above all I saw the long night coming in hours, for centuries." (Historically, the Battle of Kosovo, after which most of the Balkan peninsula became vassal states to the Ottomans, occurred in 1389, twelve years after the time of Gjon's tale.)

At the beginning of the novel, Gjon explains why he is setting down his narrative: "To stop them spreading truths and untruths about this bridge in the eleven languages of the peninsula, I will attempt to write the whole truth about it: in other words, to record the lie we saw and the truth we did not see * * *." At the end, however, it still is not clear what was lie and what was truth. THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE is densely layered and multi-faceted in potential interpretatons and meanings, in addition to the basic one that it is a portrayal of late-medieval Albania. (Is it also some sort of comment on Enver Hoxha's totalitarian regime in Albania, which was near its height at the time of the novel's publication?)

What truly distinguishes THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE is the writing -- straightforward and spare, yet colorful, imbued with magic, and compelling. Published in 1978, it is much more accomplished than "The General of the Dead Army" (published in 1963), the best-known of Kadare's novels and the only other one that I have read. This is a splendid novel.

Set in the Balkans in the 14th century, The Three-Arched Bridge tells the story of Ottoman Empire's slow, threatening expansion into a fractious Europe full of squabbling Croats, Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Bulgars and Turks. In a small town on the bank of the river Ujana e Keqe, a bridge is to be built that threatens the town's very existence by offering the Ottomans their line of attack into Europe's rear flank.

Recounted by a monk, Gjon, who observes events, the whole movement and narrative of the book hinges on a local saboteur who for a time slows the bridge's construction until he is caught and immured in the bridge itself. At this point, propaganda and legend collide in a most unpleasant manner. While the bridge represents sacrifice, it is also a metaphor for military domination. A book that may have slipped under the radar when published in 1997, Albanian novelists Kadare's The Three-Arched Bridge is a quiet delight that reads like a fable.