The Traitor's Niche

The narrative unfurls with the shifting intensity of a dream, enriched by unsettlingly surreal details… It is a brilliant examination of the way that authoritarian structures operate: Kafka on a grander political scale. * Sunday Times *
Although on the surface this is a deeply compelling historical novel, its scope is wider. At heart, what Kadare seeks to demonstrate is the terrible nature of a world in which every human element is suborned to the state… Kadare well deserves his growing European audience. * Daily Telegraph *
An extraordinary and complex novel whose time has come…40 years after its initial publication [in Albanian] * Herald *
In John Hodgson’s lucid translation, The Traitor’s Niche is absorbing from start to finish. Kadare’s allegorical burlesque has rarely been so trenchant. * Spectator *
The novel is a hymn to language, something that, as Ottoman bureaucrats intent on obliterating it instinctively know, and as Kadare’s novels prove, is not easily silenced – Claire Allfree * Daily Mail *
bewitching novel * Daily Telegraph Best Books for Summer 2017 *
Kadare [writes] with a sense of irony and a dark humour that often rise to the heights of absurdity, even when describing the most extreme situations. – Judith Vidal-Hall * Literary Review *
Kadare has said that he believes “dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible”. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship and this extraordinary novel, though tempered and surreal, is an unquestionably defiant one. – Robert Eustace * Daily Telegraph *
A wonderful exploration of European and Ottoman history that is not easily put down once opened. The examination of imperial politics and people’s desire for independence is riveting and imaginative – Pól Ó Muirí * Tablet *
Bewitching. * Daily Telegraph *

Ismail Kadare is Albania’s best-known novelist and poet. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. He was awarded the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2015.

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