The Concert

this book is amazing. it's so sweeping in scope and vast in its concerns. chronicling the decline and eventual fall of the diplomatic ties between albania and china, the novel centers on several characters whose lives are directly and indirectly implicated by the sinister game-play of doublespeak and ambivalent symbolic gestures which are hallmarks of chinese politics. this novel is relentless in its critical view of a very complicated relationship, but it does not fall into the trap of blaming or accusation on either. instead, Kadare carefully delineates the various nuances emitted by the Chinese government which are then carefully, if not always successfully, interpreted by the Albanian government so as to chart the next political move. Mao Zedong is given a certain prominence here, and the novel's marvellous rendition of this strange man and his predilection with death and the theatre would give any psychoanalyst a field day. in my view, the most compelling section of the novel is the interchapter of the tragedy of macbeth, which can be read as a cleverly intertext of the history of the power-struggle between Zedong and his marshall, Lin Biao, and/or as the superior-subordinate dialectic between China and Albania. truly, Kadare is one of the 20th (and the 21st) century's most important writer, and this novel is enough to vouch for his excellence.

This novel is often considered as the second in the "winter series" of Ismail Kadare. The first one is "The Great Winter" dealing with the worsening relations between Albania and the Soviet Empire. "The Concert" appeared in Albania in 1988, and dealt in turn with the relations between communist China and Albania. Kadare profited from the communist world's internal cleavages, and pretending to denounce and critizice the Albanian state's enemy (that is, the Chinese regime), he actually denounced Communism itself. The novel has lengthy descriptions of the Chinese dictator at that time, Mao Tse Dung, and deals with the Chinese culture in general, although it is by no means trying to faithfully make it approachable to readers. The main character is an Albanian writer, who is sent to China in a particularly difficult period in the relations of the two countries. Ismail Kadare masterfully describes the intrinsic communist politics. The novel is wonderfully written, has a terrific plot, and is an amazing witness on the power-play.