One of the earliest novels from Man Booker International Prize-winner Ismail Kadare, in English for the first time
Review
Ismail Kadare is this generation's Kafka ? Independent
Compelling . . .absorbing . . .deeply personal . . . With a new transation of Twilight of the Eastern Gods, Ismail Kadare is finally receiving the recognition he deserves ? New Statesman
Kadare writes . . . with a light of touch and with consummate literary skill. This is the work of a strange and mysterious master ? Sunday Business Post
One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language ? Wall Street Journal
Enigmatic and beguiling . . . pockmarked with brilliance ? The National
Fascinating . . . Twilight of the Eastern Gods is reflective of a culture of paranoia and suspicion, in which anyone who made a wrong move or uttered anything that might be deemed subversive could expect reprisals ? Herald
One of the world's greatest living writers -- Simon Sebag Montefiore
Like Coetzee's Youth . . . For its poetry, its pastiche and its tonic bitterness, this is a book that was worth redeeming . . . It smacks gorgeously of the bitchiness that pervaded Soviet literature ? The Times
Skilfully mixes the personal and the political . . . [Kadare is] a forceful example of how to function as a writer under communism ? Independent
His fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny . . . great writer, by any nation's standards ? Financial Times
There are very few writers alive today with the depth, power and resonance of this remarkable novelist ? Herald
One of the most important voices in literature today ? Metro
Kadare is 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
Frequently hilarious . . . Puts me in mind of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives locked in a freezer, or a version of Adelle Waldman's The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. set in a Brooklyn where it was always snowing, all the young writers in the city lived in the same building, everyone regularly consumed debilitating quantities of vodka and each was suspected of being a government informer . . . I intend to keep laying an annual £20 bet of Mr. Kadare [to win The Nobel Prize for Literature] for as long as he lives ? New York Times
Highly atmospheric ? Times Literary Supplement
The personal, against a political backdrop, is drawn out slowly and mesmerisngly ? Glasgow Sunday Herald
Kadare's sexual desire shines brightly against the dull torpor of the cold war ? Guardian
Book Description
One of the earliest novels from Man Booker International Prize-winner Ismail Kadare, in English for the first time
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.
David Bellos, Director of the Program in Translation at Princeton University, is also the translator of Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual and a winner of the Goncourt Prize for biography. He has translated seven of Ismail Kadare's novels, and in 2005 was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for his translations of Kadare's work.