The File on H.
Ismail Kadare
(Author)
David Bellos
(Translator)
Description
In the mid-1930s, two Irish Americans travel to the Albanian highlands with an early model of a marvelous invention, the tape recorder. Their mission? To discover how Homer could have composed works as brilliant and as long as The Iliad and The Odyssey without ever putting pen to paper. The answer, they believe, can be found only in Albania, the last remaining habitat of the oral epic. But immediately upon their arrival, the scholars' seemingly arcane research excites suspicion and puts them at the center of ethnic strife in the Balkans. Mistaken for foreign spies, they are placed under surveillance and are dogged by gossip and intrigue. It isn't until a fierce-eyed monk from the Serbian side of the mountains makes his appearance that the scholars glimpse the full political import of their search for the key to the Homeric question.Product Details
Price
$14.95
Publisher
Arcade Publishing
Publish Date
May 09, 2013
Pages
208
Dimensions
5.5 X 8.2 X 0.8 inches | 0.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781611457995
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About the Author
Born in 1936, Ismail Kadare is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005 he was awarded the first Man Booker International Prize for 'a body of work written by an author who has had a truly global impact'. He is the recipient of the highly prestigious 2009 Principe de Asturias de las Letras in Spain. He currently lives in Paris, France.
David Bellos is the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University, where he is also a professor of French and comparative literature. He has won many awards for his translations of Georges Perec, Ismail Kadare, and others, including the Man Booker International Translator's Award. He also received the Prix Goncourt for George Perec: A Life in Words. He is the author of the book Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything.
Reviews
As satiric and absurd as something by early Evelyn Waugh or Lawrence Durrell. The farce is sustained with touches of comic nightmare.
Kadare combines metaphysical inquiry with social realism . . . [and] a comic touch, though one dark and penetrating in the manner of Samuel Beckett's fiction.
Kadare combines metaphysical inquiry with social realism . . . [and] a comic touch, though one dark and penetrating in the manner of Samuel Beckett's fiction.
