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  • Published: 15 November 2003
  • ISBN: 9780099449836
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $29.99

Spring Flowers, Spring Frost




A story of a country attempting to reconcile its new freedom with old rituals, secrets and betrayals.

From behind the closed door, the man shouts, 'Be on your way - you have no business here!'
'Open up, I am the messenger of Death'.

As spring arrives in the Albanian mountain town of B, some strange things are emerging in the thaw. Bank robbers strike the National Bank. Old terrors are dredged up from the shipwreck of history. And ultra-explosive state secrets are threatening to flood the entire nation. Mark, an artist, finds the peaceful rhythms of his life turned upside down by ancient love and modern barbarism and by the particular brutality of a country surprised and divided by its new freedom.

  • Published: 15 November 2003
  • ISBN: 9780099449836
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare is Albania’s best-known novelist and poet. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. He was awarded the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2015.

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Praise for Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

One of the many pleasures of Mr Kadare's writing is his supremely light touch

New York Times

The themes are so sinister, the prose so genial. Post-communist disillusion and southern playfulness are blended here with such skill and subtlety that one almost fails to register Kadare's shocking originality

Independent on Sunday

One of Europe's great writers

Los Angeles Times

He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare is an original voice, universal, yet deeply rooted in his own soul

Independent on Sunday