Qyteti pa reklama

by Ismail Kadare

Ja një nga tekstet më të hershme në prozë të Ismail Kadaresë, shkruar më 1959, në moshën njëzet e tre vjeç. Deri atëherë shkrimtari kishte nxjerrë tregime të vogla, si “Kujtime të humbura”, shkruar në vitin 1955. Me “Qytetin pa reklama” ai shkruan romanin e tij të parë, që bie në kundërshtim me idenë e përhapur se romani i tij i parë është “Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur”. “Qyteti pa reklama” ka pasur një konceptim të veçantë.

Student për letërsi në Moskë, Kadare është zhytur në mikrokozmosin e letërsisë sovjetike. Duke vërejtur nga afër atë që ishte realizmi socialist, në kurset e institutit “Gorki”, ai kalon një fazë mohimi për të shkruarit. Autori i ri ka përshtypjen që pasioni i letërsisë po shuhet tek ai dhe “Qyteti pa reklama” merr atëherë pamjen e një ai lufton kundër një fataliteti, që e shtyn në indifference ndaj asaj që ai e quante deri atëherë fatin e tij...

Tre muaj iu deshën atij për të hartuar këtë roman, që e filloi duke e regjistruar në magnetofon, para se ta rikopjonte, pastaj shkruan pjesën më të madhe pa ndërhyrjen e zërit. Stili në të është i gjallë, tepër modern, dhe mendimi shumë i guximshëm për kriteret e gjykimit të botës komuniste

Genres: Fiction, Albanian Literature

166 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Ismail Kadare (also spelled Kadaré) was an Albanian novelist and poet. He has been a leading literary figure in Albania since the 1960s. He focused on short stories until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army. In 1996 he became a lifetime member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of France. In 1992, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; in 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, in 2009 the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts, and in 2015 the Jerusalem Prize. He has divided his time between Albania and France since 1990. Kadare has been mentioned as a possible recipient for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. His works have been published in about 30 languages.

Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokastër, in the south of Albania. His education included studies at the University of Tirana and then the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow, a training school for writers and critics.

In 1960 Kadare returned to Albania after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union, and he became a journalist and published his first poems.

His first novel, The General of the Dead Army, sprang from a short story, and its success established his name in Albania and enabled Kadare to become a full-time writer.

Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They are obliquely ironic as a result of trying to withstand political scrutiny. Among his best known books are Chronicle in Stone (1977), Broken April (1978), and The Concert (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.

In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."

Reviews

[Esterina Terpollari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jemi ne qytetin provincial N. ne kohen e regjimit komunist, ku Gjoni i transferuar si mesues nga Tirana e ka te pamundur te mesohet me jeten e re. Eshte nje pershkrim i gjalle i jeteses se intelektualeve dhe popullit te thjeshte, te cilet regjimi me falsitetin e tij dhe vete qyteti N., duket sikur i ka ngujuar dhe nuk i le te perparojne.
Tre shpirtra te trazuar, te pakenaqur nga jeta e tyre akademike shoqeruar me shthurjen e moshes dhe dashurite qe do i lene pezull kerkojne sukses, por nuk shohin asnje mundesi reale per te shkuar drejt suksesit. Ata zgjedhin rrugen e falsitetit duke u mbeshtetur ne nje regjim qe si baze ka po falsitetin. Ata behen heronj fals te nje shteti te tere dhe shperblehen per kete falsitet me poste te mira, duke luajtur edhe me vete kulturen e vendit. Por pune e madhe, per sa kohe regjimi eshte i kenaqur nga ky falsitet perkedheles, cdo gje duket se shkon mire deri ne grotesk.

[Ardita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Këtë libër për mua e shpëtoi pak përfundimi me tërë ironinë që përmban, edhe skena e fundit me të cilën mbyllet libri. Gjërat tjera me të cilat mbushen faqet deri në atë pikë më duken të kota, personazhet nuk jane interesantë janë disi si karikatura të njerëzve (ky mund të ketë qenë vetë qëllimi i tyre mirëpo thjeshtë nuk funksionoi për mua).
Ka libra më të mirë të Kadaresë

[Botae Librave Love book · Rating 4 out of 5]

“‘Qyteti pa reklama’ më pëlqeu për mënyrën si Kadare e përshkruan izolimin dhe vetminë me aq thellësi. Është një roman që të bën të ndihesh pjesë e një bote pa zëra, pa ngjyra të jashtme, ku mendimet dhe ndjenjat janë gjithçka. E ndjeva si një reflektim mbi jetën, lirinë dhe ndjenjën e boshllëkut që mund të ekzistojë edhe mes njerëzve.”

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Ismail Kadare’s first novel, written at the age of twenty-three while he was a student in Moscow. But when Kadare returned from the USSR, then in the midst of the Krushchev thaw, to Hoxha’s Albania that remained Stalinist and harsh on artists, he saw that he had no way to publish it. Only many decades later was it finally made available to the world.

Qyteti pa reklama is the story of Gjoni Kurti, a recent university graduate from Tirana who is assigned a high-school teaching job in a provincial city known only as “N.”. Though the city is unnamed, its description matches only a single place on earth: Kadare’s remarkable hometown of Gjirokastër with its dauntingly steep cobblestone streets, old bridges, and tensions with Greece across the border. Aghast at being stuck in this backwater during the precious years of his youth, Gjoni hatches a scheme to ensure rapid career advancement – and a swift return to Tirana – by committing literary forgery.

That this book could not be published in the Albania of the early 1960s made me expect some criticism and lampooning of the regime, and indeed there’s some of that here. But it turns out what really made the book unpublishable is the sex! Communist Albania – and conservative rural Albanian society in general – was outwardly puritan, and when one has interacted with members of Kadare’s generation, it’s a bit baffling how children ever got conceived at all. Kadare, however, depicts the young people of Gjirokastër as sex-hungry, men and women alike, and the young men lust after sex symbols like Brigitte Bardot and Gina Lollobrigida just like their peers elsewhere in Europe. A relationship between Gjoni and a local girl is told with the fire of erotic poetry. An unrelated part of the novel where the young man must get a syphilis infection treated is a great bit of comic writing.

Oddly, at the time I write this review, this novel has never been translated into English. Perhaps the criticisms of the regime, though instantly clear to anyone familiar with Communist Eastern Europe in general, are considered too subtle for Westerners to get them. Also, the climax of the book, Gjoni’s literary forgery, hinges on some details of the history of the Albanian language and its literature that only a fairly small Balkanist audience abroad could truly appreciate.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book very much and found it by turns funny and poignant (it was also quite easy reading linguistically; already Kadare was writing in the modern Albanian literary standard, with only a sprinkling of now-nonstandard words). What holds it back from being a great or even a four-star book is its publication as a strict reflection of the manuscript written in Moscow in late 1959: if Kadare had seen any possibility for publication, he probably would have filled in some details in the plot. For example, a character dies and his loss deeply affects the protagonist, but this character is hardly described, and elsewhere important action is described somewhat too sparingly.