REVIEW:CHRONICLE IN STONE

Chronicle In Stone—This was my JFDI Book Club selection, chosen because of a glowing review I read of the author’s body of work. Published in 1971 by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, it’s a boy’s account of the people and events of “a strange city...old and made of stone,” one “set at a sharper angle than perhaps any other city on earth” and where “it was hard to believe...the tender flesh of life survived and reproduced.”   Those opening descriptions set the tone for a book that contains elements of European tradition even as it defies them.  Like Albania itself. 

Reading a book in translation is always fraught with interpretive danger, one magnified when the book is long on theme and imagery and short on plot and pathos.  What is invariably missed is the poetry of the language.  And yet the poetry of the imagery—e.g., the cistern, the slaughterhouse, the citadel, the aerodrome—is here in abundance. By adopting the narrative voice of a pre-adolescent boy, Kadare assumes the role of an observer of things elemental and not abstract. There are no value judgements about the people, their actions or the events that are taking place. And those events are extraordinary, as the chronicle covers the years from 1939 to 1943, when Albania and the stone city were invaded by the Italians, the Greeks and the Germans.

The book therefore puts a big burden on the reader used to a Western literary tradition that usually makes it easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, especially in books about war, where lines of morality are sharply drawn.  Here, though, in a positively medieval society where ancient prejudices and superstitions form the moral code, the ability to relate to characters without the slightest sense of place in a truly global event is a real challenge. But ultimately that is what makes this book so different from any other I have read.  And different in this case translates as memorable.

At the JDFI get-together I gave this book 4 stars, but after writing this review, I’m giving it 5. Go on, call it self-justification; I dare yuh. Other scores at the confab were a 4 and two 3s. But we all gave the food and beer at the Fox & Anchor a 6. Big thanks to Mike for choosing the venue. Bigger thanks for him opting to stay home and not projectile-vomit all over our cosy little room at the inn.    

Feliz Navidad, Prospero Ano y Felicidad

El Hombre Sin Nombre

T. Fred Wells