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  • Published: 2 October 2006
  • ISBN: 9780099497196
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $24.99

The File on H




A haunting yet humorous evocation of a society dangerously trapped in its past.

Two Irish-American scholars from Harvard journey to Albania in the 1930s with a tape recorder (a 'new fangled' invention) in order to record the last genuinely oral epic singers. Their purpose, they say, is to show how Homer's epics might have been culled from a verbal tradition. But the local Governor believes its an elaborate spying mission and arranges for his own spy to follow them.The two dedicated scholars realise only too late that they have stumbled over an ants' nest.

This simple tale by Albania's most eminent and gifted novelist serves to lift the veil on one of the most secret and mysterious countries of modern Europe.

  • Published: 2 October 2006
  • ISBN: 9780099497196
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $24.99

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 The File on H

Witty and touching. It consolidates Kadare's reputation as one of the finest writers to emerge from communist Europe

Sunday Times

Eloquent, engaging and poignant

Irish Times

A wicked and amusing satire of provincial life...it is also an elegiac celebration of the power of poetry

Times Literary Supplement

Funny, strange, and melancholy

Guardian

Knife-sharp satire...originality shines through

The Times

Anyone still wondering why Kadare won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize for literature in 2005 will be enlightened by this tragicomic gem

Daily Telegraph