The General of the Dead Army

Some twenty years after World War II, an Italian general embarks on a mission in Albania to retrieve the dead and buried bodies of Italian soldiers and return them to their home country and families. Accompanied by a fellow countryman priest, a local "expert," and a small staff of shovel-wielding laborers, this small party treks ceaselessly across the Albanian countryside and into the mountains. Thorughout this macabre, two-year exercise, remains are excavated, identified where possible, and stowed away in nylon plastic body bags. All the while, Albanian locals observe the goings on with a mixture of disbelief and distrust, the latter feelings arising from the perception that enemy soldiers are enemies, whether alive or dead. Thus, in their eyes, the unaware but well-intentioned general is building a new army, an army of the dead. Yet even as the Italian cohort shuttles from place to place retrieving its buried dead, a counterpart Albanian group headed by a lieutenant-general and a town mayor is undertaking the same task in a rather more scattershot way. Great effort has clearly gone into planning the project: careful negotiation between the Italian and Albanian governments, drawing up of detailed maps based on interviews with fellow soldiers and the dead men's families, and descriptions of the deceased including heights and dental records. Both the general and the priest express particular interest in finding the remains of one Colonel Z., commander of a Blue Battalion unit much reviled by the Albanians for its brutality. For the general, it is a matter of honor to retrieve a fellow officer's remains at his widow's behest, but for the priest, there are intimations of more dubious favors granted or promised. In the project's early stages, all goes smoothly. Gradually, however, the grim nature of the task begins to wear on the general as heavily as the mountainous terrain and the unforgiving weather. He begins seeing himself as the Albanians must view him, as a commander of a steadily growing force that could be formed into sections and companies and battalions, eventually to become full regiments and divisions. He imagines himself leading those men during the war in such a way as to bring victory without their deaths and, later, he leads them to victories in battles fought by Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, all the way up to Korea and Vietnam. "Who would dare stand up to my Nylon Army?" he tells himself. The general's grip on reality diminishes in evident proportion to his project's percentage of completion so that, as the mission nears conclusion, he loses his sense of diplomatic perspective altogether. Ignoring the priest's warnings, the general decides one evening to attend a locals' wedding in a small town. He is received cordially as custom dictates, but coldly nonetheless, and his behavior precipitates the book's climactic crisis before tensions and emotions recede to their former banality at story's end. In some ways, the general'

This is the first novel written by Kadare and is considered by many as his masterpice.During the communist era it was difficult or immposible for a writer to express his opinions in the eastern part of the world but Kadare found a way which for many soviet writers was and was going to be the only way of expression :writing in codes.General of the dead army wasn't written with a communist inspiration but it was used by the communists to show the losses of Italy during the great war and use this as an information to manipulate the populations' way of thinking and to increase the albanian communist hate for the west.Kadare was considered as one of Hoxhas' greatest supporters and only after the 90s it was made clear to the public opinion that this book wasn't written for the purpose of hate but to express the guiltiness of the ones who make war and this is what makes Kadares books so uniqe:the double expression of opinions in a very abstract atmosphere.Other books of Kadare were liberal to the limits of his allowance and he has been nearly killed several times for his books by the regime of the time Kadare is truly one of the biggest witers of our century and I am honored that he is Albanian but imagine waht he could have done if he was born in a free country,I think that another Sheakspeare,Tolstoy or Goethe would have been counted in the world.

An Italian general negotiates the repatriation of the corpses of fallen Italian soldiers during World War II in Albania.His visit gets the war demons on the rise again: love and hate stories, reckonings, wild passions and the spectre of fascism.This book is a powerful reflection on politics (fascism) and the inhuman face of a destructive war: a highly originally built (a combination of flashbacks, excerpts from diaries, love letters ...) and very compelling anti-war novel.A masterpiece.

What a great work, a masterpiece, a writing that has no limits when it comes to imagination. I read the book and i thought i read Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Kafka, Tolstoi, and all the greatest writers of all the time. Mr. Ismail Kadare is one of the best among them. Albania and Albanians should very proud of this master of writing. How come such an immortal writer has still not won the Nobel Prize in Literature? If there is a Nobel Prize this year, that should be given to Mr. Kadare. Truly, read this book and you'll see the magic right at the first page, even the title will tell you that.

at this book Kadare reveals the his genuis on what just a few contemporary writers of that time could ...and as a matter of fact i was deeply disappointed when he was not awarded the nobel prize.i have read many of his titles and they are a world class..