Praise for A Girl in Exile A New York Times Book Review ''s Editors'' Choice Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by the Chicago Review of Books and The Millions 1 of 19 Translated Books to Add to Your Reading List This Summer (Signature Reads) "Ismail Kadare''s readers are astonished every year when the Nobel committee overlooks him . A Girl in Exile , published in Albanian in 2009, may rekindle the worldwide hopes." -- The New York Times Book Review (Editors'' Choice) " A Girl in Exile is erotic, paranoiac and lightly fantastical." -- The Wall Street Journal "Kadare''s mellifluous fever dream is a portrait of madness: the madness of the Stalinist state and the madness of men and women in the clamp of the state''s machinations . At a time when parts of the world are indulging nostalgia for communism, Kadare''s novel confronts the infuriating impossibility of art in an autocratic, anti-individualist system." -- The Washington Post " A Girl in Exile is the gripping account of a playwright''s tragic struggle with the effects of his creative work, as understood through political upheaval, narrative interchangeability, and a magnetic relationship . Beautifully, the text addresses the cruelties of dictatorship." -- Los Angeles Review of Books "While common sense says that no artist can overhaul a country''s literature singlehandedly, Kadare has done so .
A Girl in Exile is the work of a historic talent who is still at the peak of his power. It confirms Kadare to be the best writer at work today who remembers--almost aggressively so, refusing to forget--European totalitarianism. Kadare tackles Albania''s specific strangeness with a ferocious rigor that would feel scientific if it were not for the haunted, haunting humans he writes into being." -- New Republic "Set among the bureaucratic machinery of Albania''s dictatorship, this compelling novel evokes the paranoid nature of life and love under surveillance." -- Chicago Review of Books , The Most Anticipated Fiction Books of 2018 "Kadare structures the novel like a psychological detective yarn, but one with some serious existential heft . A strong study of the ease and banality of human duplicity." -- The Millions , Most Anticipated: The Great 2018 Book Preview "Powerful, empathetic, at times harrowing . executed with an elegant combination of horror, absurdity, indignation, and other-worldliness .
A chilling, humane and strangely beautiful work." -- Independent "A brilliant novel that captures the horrors of a totalitarian regime." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "A compelling amalgam of realism, dreaminess and elegiac, white-hot fury. Kadare communicates with awful immediacy the nature of tyranny and the accommodations that those subject to it must make--as Kadare himself had to do." --John Banville, Financial Times "The literature Kadare has produced in the face of obstacles lesser writers would find insuperable, is, genuinely, of world significance . Invites comparison with Milan Kundera''s recent satire on Stalinism, The Festival of Insignificance . Both writers are favourites, year-in, year-out for the Nobel prize. Kadare will not damage his prospects with A Girl in Exile .
" --John Sutherland, The Times "Melodrama, tragedy and myth illuminate the relationship between individual and state in a fine novel from the great Albanian writer." -- Guardian "Kadare is frequently mentioned as a Nobel contender, and his chances should only be enhanced by this odd and powerful novel." -- Booklist "Myth and dream, memory and repression, all converge as the novel illuminates the essence of art in totalitarian Albania. An author respected throughout Europe should reach a wider American readership with this subversive novel." -- Kirkus Reviews "The novel effectively conveys the era''s drabness and repression, providing a timely sense of the constraints imposed by authoritarian regimes . A good treatment of repressive politics." -- Library Journal "Comparisons to Kafka are inevitable, but there''s also some Joseph Heller here. Kadare successfully renders Big Brother .
A poignant narrative about exile." -- Publishers Weekly "Ismail Kadare is one of the most lauded writers-in-translation in the English language, certainly one of Europe''s most important writers, and virtually the singular representative of Albanian culture to the anglophone world . The novel is by turns a probing exploration of the strict censures on everyday life--from which coffee shop one drinks at to the friends and lovers one has and the art one makes--under a totalitarian regime, and by turns epic in its connections among the present of life under Hoxha in the 1980s and the ancient past of Western mythology and history." -- World Literature Today "[Kadare] captures the paranoid nature of life under constant surveillance . and produces an ironic masterpiece." -- Daily Mail "Filled with striking images and conceits . a powerful Kafkaesque charge . Kadare''s imaginative intelligence ensures that it is chilling and intriguing.
" --Theo Tait, Sunday Times "Coolly ironic writing, which traverses ominous themes of censorship and state control . Kadare masterfully conjures an atmosphere of paranoia . This powerful novel is a monument." --Francesca Wade, Daily Telegraph " A Girl in Exile , from internationally acclaimed Albanian author and perennial Nobel Prize favorite Ismail Kadare, is a powerful and complex tale of life in the ''dictatorship of the proletariat'' . [A] striking exploration of love, art, paranoia, and the limits of freedom in a totalitarian state." -- Foreword Reviews " A Girl in Exile is both a timeless, ghostly love story, and a trenchant portrait of the artist in a totalitarian state." -- 4Columns.