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Praise for The Traitor’s Niche
“The quest for a rebel pasha’s severed head becomes a grimly comic comment in John Hodgson’s translation of this brilliant and laconic 1978 Albanian novel, an allegorical fable about 20th-century authoritarianism.”
—The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“The book’s political intentions are shrewd and unmistakable. By depicting the corruption and whimsical cruelty of the Ottoman Empire, Mr. Kadare smuggles in a damning appraisal of Albanian Communism . . . Its evocation of the past feels both contemporary (tourists flock to Istanbul to gawk at the severed head, and you can almost imagine them taking cellphone photos) and outside of time. Mr. Kadare has more in common with William Faulkner, a writer who spins mythology out of regional legends. This, too, is a moral project as well as an artistic one. In The Traitor’s Niche, Mr. Kadare delineates the Ottoman Empire’s efforts to vouchsafe subservience by expunging Albania of its language and customs. This unforgettable novel adds to his lifelong work of cultural reclamation. The past is uncannily present in his books—a phantom that walks among the living, or a severed head that seems to lock you in its gaze.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“The novel relentlessly exposes the impact of authoritarianism, showing how it crushes the human spirit—including, perhaps most perniciously, the souls of those who aspire to be autocrats. Reading the book today, one can understand the response it provoked from the communist censors, since its critique, though displaced in time, is clearly directed at Hoxha’s regime. Yet the story is also a more encompassing parable of authoritarianism that is relevant far beyond its immediate historical moment . . . Kadare also shows a unique talent at peering inside the mind of a tyrant . . . In The Traitor’s Niche, as in all his best works, Kadare powerfully evokes—and critiques—the sheer, irascible strangeness of unchecked power.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Finally (and very elegantly) translated . . . Riveting.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Forty years after its publication in Albanian, the English translation by John Hodgson is effective in relaying the creative naturalism of his informal, though skillfully poetic, idiosyncratic tone . . . Kadare’s fiction intuits the spirit of the art movements of his day, orbiting the dark ambiance of indie cinema, goth punk, shock installation. The gift of Kadare as a writer is also not merely in the aesthetics of his language, but in the rudimentary transmission of deft, witty meaning, and deeply satirical commentary.”
—MATT HANSON, The Millions
“Kadare’s Traitor’s Niche is a short, rich, thickly described indictment of empire, nationalism, and the state, a timely meditation on the violences of bureaucracy, corruption, and the injustice of justice.”
—PopMatters
“The baroque madness of the Ottoman bureaucracy is beautifully drawn, and the characters are sketched well. Each time you find yourself hoping against hope that you aren’t meeting the next occupant of the niche.”
—Historical Novel Society
“With its allegorical style, dark humor, and muscular commentary on contemporary Albania under Enver Hoxha, it is very much classic Kadare.”
—Booklist
“Kadare brilliantly examines the private cost of despotism while illustrating a crucial episode in the history of Albania. Kadare’s powerful, nimble novel is a gem.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A political fable of decapitation amid totalitarian oppression combines wickedly funny satire with darker, deeper lessons . . . The only signs that it’s set in the early 19th century are offhand references to Byron and Napoleon; otherwise it reads less like historical fiction than timeless prophecy, as it anticipates the relentless expansion of an empire.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This piercingly beautiful work quietly delivers a persuasive sense of human violence.”
—Library Journal
THE TRAITOR’S NICHE
ALSO BY ISMAIL KADARE
The General of the Dead Army
The Siege
Chronicle in Stone
Twilight of the Eastern Gods
The File on H
The Three-Arched Bridge
Broken April
The Ghost Rider
The Concert
The Palace of Dreams
The Pyramid
Three Elegies for Kosovo
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost
Agamemnon’s Daughter
The Successor
The Fall of the Stone City
The Accident
A Girl in Exile
The Traitor’s Niche
Copyright © 1984 by Librarie Arthème Fayard
First published in Albanian as Pashallëqet e mëdha by Naim Frashëri © 1978. All rights reserved.
English translation copyright © 2017 by John Hodgson
First Counterpoint edition: 2018
First Counterpoint paperback edition: 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover as follows:
Names: Kadare, Ismail, author. | Hodgson, John, 1951– translator.
Title: The traitor’s niche : a novel / Ismail Kadare ; translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson.
Other titles: Kamarja e turpit. English
Description: Berkely, CA : Counterpoint Press, 2018. | “First published with the title Kamarja e Turpit in 1978 by Naim Frashri Publishing House, Tirana” — ECIP galley.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017055406 | ISBN 9781640090446
Subjects: LCSH: Albanian fiction—Translations into English. | Turkey—History—Ottoman Empire, 1288–1918—Fiction. | Albania—History—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PG9621.K3 K3413 2018 | DDC 891/.9913—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055406
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64009-202-0
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