Review Summaries

• The novel is valued as an allegory of war's futility and the self-deception of former invaders. Its seemingly plain journey gradually becomes a severe moral inquiry.

Reviews

• A Macabre Mission, and an Allegorical Tale of War's Meaninglessness

  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's gradual, alcohol-fueled descent into a sort of temporary madness is strongly reminiscent of Geoffrey Firmin's far more tragic, one day, alcoholic descent in Lowry's UNDER THE VOLCANO. An interesting stylistic element of THE GENERAL OF THE DEAD ARMY is Kadare's decision to render nearly all his characters nameless. The general, the priest, the expert, the Albanian lieutenant-general and mayor, Colonel Z. - none have names, just occupational titles. Even the dead soldier whose diary the general reads is known to the locals as "Soldier." Only a few Albanians are gifted the warmth of names: Christine in Soldier's diary and the gravediggers, Reiz and Lilo. Everyone else labors in anonymity, as befits the honor of the unknown dead to whose recovered remains they are attempting to reattach names. As Kadare often does, he sprinkles his work with references to events and places in other of his novels. For example, he includes several references to the city of Gjirokaster and its citadel, to the arrival of a small band of prostitutes, and to the recovery in a downed plane of a dead English pilot's hand, all of which can be found again in CHRONICLE IN STONE. Albania is Kadare's equivalent of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, a sort of ubercharacter present in all his works. It is a place whose presence and force equals that of his human characters and seems, in fact, to shape their behaviors. For example, in describing his countrymen's warlike propensities, he writes: "...the Albanians are given to war by their very nature....They hurl themselves into it with all their hearts and with eyes wide open....once they've been given a shot of it they become intoxicated...deprived of war and weapons this people would wither away, its roots would dry up and it would eventually just disappear." Yet since these words are spoken by the Italian priest by way of explanation to the Italian general, who knows if they are Kadare's views or his perspective of outsiders' views on his country?

• Rapidez aunque el libro dañado

  El libro vino con algunas hojas sueltas por lo demás rápida entrega

• Great Book.

  Amazing Book. Seems like you’re present there and can feel what author has written. Book is addictive. For a new reader language might be a bit difficult to understand.

• Excellent

  One of Kadare's best novels set after WW2 in Albania.

• Good book

  a great classic.

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