A dictator calls : a novel / Ismail Kadare ; translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kadare, Ismail, author.

Contributor:

Hodgson, John, 1951- translator.

Standardized Title:

Kur sunduesit grinden. English

Language:

Albanian

English

Subjects (All):

Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953--Fiction.

Stalin, Joseph.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960--Fiction.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960.

Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953.

Albanian fiction--Translations into English.

Albanian fiction.

Genre:

Fiction.

Historical fiction.

Novels.

Fiction

Historical fiction

Novels

Physical Description:

230 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Counterpoint paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2023.

Summary:

"In June 1934, Stalin allegedly called Boris Pasternak and they spoke about the arrest of Osip Mandelstam. A telephone call from the dictator was not something necessarily relished, and in the complicated world of literary politics it would have provided opportunities for potential misunderstanding and profound trouble. But this was a call one could not ignore. Stalin wanted to know what Pasternak thought of the idea that Mandelstam had been arrested. Ismail Kadare explores the afterlife of this phone call using accounts of witnesses, reporters, writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, wives, mistresses, biographers, and even archivists of the KGB. The results offer a meditation on power and political structure, and how literature and authoritarianism construct themselves in plain sight of one another. Kadare's reconstruction becomes a gripping mystery, as if true crime is being presented in mosaic"-- Provided by publisher

Notes:

"Copyright ©2022, Librairie Arthème Fayard ... Translation copyright ©2023 by John Hodsgon" -- Verso.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Gift of Joan Detz.

ISBN:

9781640096080

1640096086

OCLC:

1356891733

Publisher Number:

99994769282