Chronicle in Stone: Ismail Kadare
Magical realism in a time of war...
A few years ago, I read Lea Ypi’s wonderful memoir, ‘Free’, about growing up during the collapse of the Communist era, as the power and philosophy of Enver Hoxha waned. This week, I read Ismail Kadare’s Chronicle in Stone, which ends at the beginning of the Communist era.
Chronicle in Stone is a sort of auto fiction, describing a childhood in an Albanian city during WWII. The blood and fear takes on a fearful, tragic tone, with an older way of life and thinking - viewing life through the lens of magic. curses, and the killing of a young woman for kissing a boy - clashes with modernity, represented by seeing glasses, cow fields being turned into airfields, with suspicion of Kadare-child falling in love with books and seeing the blood and murder of Macbeth around him in real life. Yet, Kadare balances the tragedy with humor and absurdism, and a touch of magical realism with reality and the march of progress. His writing is so readable, so subtly balanced and sublime that I read finished this book within a few hours in a single evening.
If you look closely at the photos, I've added other books that I thought of as I read Chronicle in Stone (lots of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Suitable Boy, A Fine Balance, Orhan Pamuk, and Lea Ypi's memoir).
