Winner of the Man Booker Prize
An old woman is awoken in the dead of night by knocks at her front door. The woman opens it to find her daughter, Doruntine, standing there alone in the darkness. She has been brought home from a distant land by a mysterious rider she claims is her brother Konstandin. But unbeknownst to her, Konstandin has been dead for years. What follows is chain of events which plunges a medieval village into fear and mistrust. Who is the ghost rider?
“The novel itself, a relatively short one, is on one level a famous Albanian folk story which has been re-imagined as a medieval mystery. Beyond this, however, is a more complex tale which seeks to describe a sense of what it is to be Albanian…a story that shows how national identity was created and sustained in this small nation surrounded by many larger forces who sought to influence and control her throughout her history.” (Solar Bridge) A narrative that is based on the Albanian cultural precept that a besa, a sacred promise, must be fulfilled no matter what.
“Kadare’s fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny—pointing both to the grand themes and small details that make up life in a restrictive environment. A great writer, by any nation’s standards.” —Financial Times
“One of Europe’s most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader’s consciousness.”
—Los Angeles Times
(A special thank you to book club member, Jordi Valbuena for the suggestion.)
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