Albania is one of those nations that has spent a lot of its history under outside control. It’s across the Adriatic Sea from Italy and bordered by Greece and Kosovo, so it has elements of Italian, Greek, and Balkan culture as well as its own. It was part of the Ottoman Empire, and then of Mussolini’s empire. When Italy fell, the Germans took over. After the war, the Communists took charge. It has had a complicated transition to multiparty democracy and remains a relatively poor, relatively rural nation.
This novel starts when the Nazis arrive. The two main characters are doctors who share a name and specialty (gynecology), but who are not related. One is small and trained in Italy, the other is large and studied in Germany. Naturally, they are symbols of Albania’s transition during World War II, and a lot of strange things happen in the first part of the book. I was so confused in places that I thought I would have to re-read it, which at 168 pages of text would have been okay. However, in the second part of the book, I realized that the confusion was intentional. The story became clear to me. Kadare perfectly recreated the mood of a place undergoing rapid social change, with people choosing sides. This is a great book.
