Ismail Kadare

At the centre of young Ismail's world is the unknowable figure of his mother. Naive and fragile as a paper doll, she is an unlikely presence in her husband's great stone house, with its hidden rooms and infamous dungeon, and is constantly at odds with her wise and thin-lipped mother-in-law. She is not without her own enigmas, and she fears that her intellectual son-- who uses words she doesn't understand, publishes radical poetry, falls in love freely...

A tale blending history and folklore traces the occupation of the ancient Albanian stone city of Gjirokastër by Nazi forces in 1943 and the bizarre hospitality shown by a doctor to the Nazi colonel during a fateful dinner party.

Two destinies intersect in Broken April. The first is that of Gjor, a young mountaineer who (much against his will) has just killed a man in order to avenge the death of his older brother, and who expects to be killed himself in keeping with the provisions of the Code that regulates life in the highlands. The second is that of a young couple on their honeymoon who have come to study the age-old customs of the place, including the blood feud. While...

A coming-of-age tale by the inaugural Man Booker International Prize winner follows a young man's efforts to juggle the challenges of growing up in Albania during the terrors of World War II, a period marked by devastating cruelty, betrayals, and simple pleasures.