Twilight of the Eastern Gods
- 6 Aug 2015
- 9780857866196
- £9.99
- 208 pp
- 129×198mm
- 7 Aug 2014
- 9780857868909
- £7.99
- 208 pp
In a few words
One of the earliest novels from Man Booker International Prize-winner Ismail Kadare, in English for the first time
In a few words
One of the earliest novels from Man Booker International Prize-winner Ismail Kadare, in English for the first time
Ismail Kadare is this generation's Kafka
Compelling . . .absorbing . . .deeply personal . . . With a new transation of Twilight of the Eastern Gods, Ismail Kadare is finally receiving the recognition he deserves
Ismail Kadare is this generation's Kafka
Compelling . . .absorbing . . .deeply personal . . . With a new transation of Twilight of the Eastern Gods, Ismail Kadare is finally receiving the recognition he deserves
More about
the book
1958. In a dorm room in Moscow, a young writer is woken by the sound of angry voices on the radio. Through the fog of a hangover he hears the news that a novel called Doctor Zhivago has earned its author the Nobel Prize. There is uproar. The author, Boris Pasternak, faces exile, the press hound him and demand that he refuse the award. A few days earlier the young writer found a copy of this book – could those simple pages really be so dangerous?
Based on Ismail Kadare’s own experience, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a portrait of a city, a story of youthful disenchantment and a reminder of the incredible importance of the written word.
More about
the book
1958. In a dorm room in Moscow, a young writer is woken by the sound of angry voices on the radio. Through the fog of a hangover he hears the news that a novel called Doctor Zhivago has earned its author the Nobel Prize. There is uproar. The author, Boris Pasternak, faces exile, the press hound him and demand that he refuse the award. A few days earlier the young writer found a copy of this book – could those simple pages really be so dangerous?
Based on Ismail Kadare’s own experience, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a fictionalised recreation of his time as a student at the prestigious Gorky Institute for World Literature – a strange ‘factory of the intellect’ set up to produce a new generation of Socialist writers. With its drunken nights, uninspiring professors, specially selected students and enforced Socialist Realism his time at the Gorky Institute brought Kadare to the brink of abandoning writing altogether.
In English for the first time, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a portrait of a city and a time, it is a story of youth, of disenchantment and of the incredible importance of the written word.
Kadare writes . . . with a light of touch and with consummate literary skill. This is the work of a strange and mysterious master
One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language
Enigmatic and beguiling . . . pockmarked with brilliance
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
Kadare writes . . . with a light of touch and with consummate literary skill. This is the work of a strange and mysterious master
One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language
Enigmatic and beguiling . . . pockmarked with brilliance
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
Ismail Kadare
View profileBorn in 1936, Ismail Kadare was Albania’s best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005, he won the inaugural 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. He died in 2024, aged 88.
David Bellos is director of the Program in Translation at Princeton University and the author of Is That A Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation. He won the French-American Foundation’s Translation Prize for his version of Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual, and the Goncourt Prize for Biography for Georges Perec. A Life in Words. He has translated seven of Ismail Kadare’s novels as well as works by Romain Gary, Georges Simenon, Daniel Anselme and Georges Perec.
Ismail Kadare
View profileBorn in 1936, Ismail Kadare was Albania’s best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005, he won the inaugural 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. He died in 2024, aged 88.
David Bellos is director of the Program in Translation at Princeton University and the author of Is That A Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation. He won the French-American Foundation’s Translation Prize for his version of Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual, and the Goncourt Prize for Biography for Georges Perec. A Life in Words. He has translated seven of Ismail Kadare’s novels as well as works by Romain Gary, Georges Simenon, Daniel Anselme and Georges Perec.
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We’re very sorry to hear of the passing of Ismail Kadare. “ A giant of Albanian literature ”, as the Guardian obituary puts it, Kadare’s writing career began under the dictator Enver Hoxha, and his books quickly brought him international acclaim. He spent much of his
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