> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446433454
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

The Concert




A chilling portrait of life under Communist rule by Albania's most important writer

It's the 1970s and cracks are starting to appear in the alliance between China and its Communist cohort Albania. When an Albanian steps on the foot of a Chinese diplomat the tension cranks up – couriers between Tirana and Beijing carry annotated x-rays of the foot back and forth. The Chinese intend to punish their interfering little ally discreetly. But is the Sino-Albanian axis about to come adrift? This is Kadare’s surreal black comedy about the inner sanctums of political power and the mysterious causal chains that transform ordinary lives.

  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446433454
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

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.

Also by Ismail Kadare

See all

Praise for The Concert

His finest book is The Concert, an epic study of the Albanians when living under the thumb of their sole world ally, the Chinese. It is half realism, half Borgesian, and the form and content jointly stun

Independent

It is Shakespearian in its sweep of history with its insertions of poetic and theatrical farce and its description of the contortions Albanians had to perform to survive Marxist doctrine

Sydney Morning Herald

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

Independent on Sunday

The Concert is a splendidly deep and serious novel that entirely transcends, as it were, its unremarkable outer garment… Kadare's achievement is to dramatise truthfully throughout. This is a book to read and re-read

Guardian

The Concert is among the richest, most complex and most challenging works of his fictional cycle… Kadare's achievement is to have found once again the set of tricks that create the illusion of real life on the printed page

Sydney Morning Herald