What constitutes a beautiful book? Here, just some impressions . . .

Broken April by Ismail Kadare, Impressions . . .

By Nitsa Anastasiades

What constitutes a beautiful book?

Is it the prose which carries you with the carriage in Kadare’s Broken April, through its mountain range with its passengers, Diana and Bessian on their honeymoon to Albania’s High Plateau? Is it the patience with which the author participates in, extends the descriptions of weather and landscapes, feelings and man? Time, he invests in these, to view, one senses, what ominous deed will unravel, pan out, showing ultimately, how all these are inextricably linked? The images that stay with you, perhaps, through the constant repetition of a murder looming from the voices of inn keepers, mountaineers, a curse- telling village woman, and the revered fatal Kanun’s interpreter, Ali Binak?

This book of 216 pages, compact in your hand, is a fascinating insight into Albanian culture, past lives and customs, legends and land.

I was both chilled and enchanted with the newly wed enigmatic Diana, and the travelling Gjorg finally reaching the ‘Castle of Orosh’ where Gjorg must pay his ‘blood tax’ (he shot the man who had shot his brother, and next Gjorg will be killed by the dead man’s family member, repeating this cycle in accordance with the Kanun, or ‘Code of Customary Law’). Diana, initially interacting with her writer husband’s fascination of this almost fairy tale depicted ‘dead man’s land’, soon challenges this law, by entering the male-only house where murderers take refuge, looking for Gjorg. And Gjorg, equally, roams, searching Diana, unable to forget the carriage and her passing face . . . indeed whosoever comes into contact with her are changed; she is not from these parts, somehow aloof, and her beauty is interpreted as evil.  

One can’t help recall here Sleeping Beauty, and I held onto the notion, after several inn stops and river walks, debates with her husband and their conflicting inner monologues, that Diana and the exhausted, wandering Gjorg, would finally meet before his shooting, ending – if not with a kiss – perhaps with her cradling him, or at the very least with them both facing.

But Kadare diverts, or rather, he continues that which he set out to do – to follow Gjorg to his inevitable shooting, where he, ‘saw the ground reel, and then rear up violently against his face . . . this is it, he thought, and really the whole thing has been going on too long’, the assassin’s footsteps, then, echoing his own, when he, too, had previously killed and walked away to seek refuge – thus for Kadare, his mission achieved.

I rather hoped, yes, for a more subverted ending, something more along the lines of Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’, where the unnamed heroine reclaims her lot – unlocks her husband’s kingdom – for Kadare’s story, and, yes, Diana deserves this balance: why put her there in the first place if not only to act as catalyst for the male characters’ authority, or to further embed the ongoing debate for sexes’ positions and inequality in the world? Well, at least Kadare presents this, or merely touches on it. Just like his chilling prose . . .where death is portrayed as something sweet – he disturbs, antagonizes, challenges, then pulls away.

I saw this too, in his autobiographical The Doll – re. his young mother’s marriage, then confinement to her house (another facet of highly regarded honour). She has no education and must conform, not only to her husband’s wishes, but also to his mother’s. The text reminisces, through mother/son exchanges, on the author’s growth as an aspiring author, together with his views and musings, questions he has, on her undiscovered and unfulfilled potential, whatever that might have been; she’s never asked. But again, with Kadare, it is the ending. Just as in Broken April, he promises light for Diana, for, after all, must not all endings in a story be ‘knotted up’, resolved, to please the reader? Or, perhaps by so doing, Kadare leaves all questions open, just as in a sex scene – where a couple go into a room after a romantic night’s dinner, closing the door. The audience can imagine what will happen; it is enough to present the case. Or is Kadare, by retracting, accepting the status quo – that in Albania, perhaps, females are male’s property and that’s ‘just the way it is’, has always been – as with the Kanun: ‘at times the orders come from a really distant place, the place of generations long gone’ –  he is highlighting subtly, these discrepancies, concerns? – which float in his subconscious and seep onto the page? Note: ‘at times’ . . . a glimmer of hope, then.

Either way, Kadare is an enlightening writer, calm, subdued, a master of his game, offering, like Chekhov, a glimpse into a rural life from yet another land: an education; engaging, questioning, disturbing, something/someone I’ll not forget easily, will further explore – and isn’t that what beautiful literature is about?

Nitsa Anastasiades is a writer currently living in Kosovo. Her short story collection: ‘Foreign Borders‘, for which she seeks representation, explores exile, loneliness, patriarchy, mental illness, such as OCD, ageing, coming of age, Alzheimer’s, family relationships, partnerships, friendship, displacement and travelling/cultural borders, all set in different countries; she has taught English and lived in Malaysia, Zambia, Nigeria, Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai, UK, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Cyprus.

She’s writing ‘Sea with Salty Water‘, too (between blog writing and Baltic hill climbing) – a novel about Greek Cypriot upbringing in 70’s Britain juxtaposed with the ’74 coup in Cyprus.

She has an MSc in Creative Writing Fiction with Edinburgh University, Poetry, Creative Non- Fiction, Advanced Fiction and Poetry from Oxford University and Manchester Metropolitan National Centre for Writing respectively.

Check out more of her blogs and interests re. landscapes, people, culture, art, books, debates and more from ‘Nitsa’s Literary Culture hub’, here:

https://lit901529925.wordpress.com/about/

https://lit901529925.wordpress.com/2021/02/23/a-leap-into-discovery/

https://lit901529925.wordpress.com/2021/03/08/tastes-and-shades-in-mother-theresa-street/

Flower Pot Chrysanthemum Plant, Pristina – Nitsa's Literary Culture hub (wordpress.com)

Nitsa Anastasiades | (ed.ac.uk)