2024 Int Booker longlist: A Dictator Calls

[Hugh, Active moderator]

A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare translated by John Hodgson (Harvill Secker), Albanian/Albania

[Paul]

A lot of the reviews I've read of this have it as not his finest work - indeed was even some X/Twitter chat about it being a shame he made the list as readers' first - and last - experience of Kadare might be this one.

I think the book may also mention the fact that he's a Nobel Prize contender, at least in his and the bookies eyes. Although Alex Shepherd's 2022 piece rather dismissed him as a "less important Albanian cultural export than Dua Lipa" (hard to argue).

[Rachel]

Paul wrote: "I think the book may also mention the fact that he's a Nobel Prize contender"

Oh yes, he mentions it several times.

It was interesting enough, but the rehashing of the different versions gets old pretty quickly. This one, more so than all of the others on this list, felt almost completely like nonfiction.

[Paul]

He does seem to be convinced is in a frequent nominee. Which is interesting given the nominations are kept secret for 50 years. And also being nominated by the local literary society doesn’t mean you are in real contention.

I would say that’s just the tongue in cheek persona of the narrator. Except Euronews was with him when the 2022 Prize was announced - he said he no longer had an opinion on why he hadn’t won after 40 years and his wife announced neither of them had ever heard of the person who did win (Annie Ernaux; they live in France).

[Paul]

A question for those familiar with Kadare who has featured on this prize before

P21-23 in Harvill Secker hardback refers to a loose trilogy of novels he was trying to publish

(I will use English rather than original titles)

First is The Three Arched Bridge
second is The Traitor’s Niche (which featured on the prize)

Third this novel implies is his Pasternak / student life in Moscow novel

But that is Twilight of the Eastern Gods which came out in instalments well before the the other two parts (although published in 1981 in whole).

But the third part of that trilogy is usually taken as The Palace of Dreams, which is different entirely - all three novels are then ostensibly set in Albania under Ottoman rule but subversively commenting on the Hoxha regime.

So why is he linking the Pasternak novel instead?

[Paul]

I'm actually impressed the judges picked this - even though the ambition is rather in advance of the execution. (well assuming they didn't do it just because he's a big name author).

It's of the type of novel Javier Cercas calls the blind-spot novel, and also novel-without-fiction, where the novelistic element comes in not answering the central question - here what Pasternak and Stalin said to each other:

This is Cercas on what he calls 'the blind spot novel' (and also the novel-without-fiction) which is very much what this is:

The novel is not the genre of answers, but that of questions: writing a novel consists of posing a complex question in order to formulate it in the most complex way possible, not to answer it, or not to answer it in a clear and unequivocal way; it consists of immersing oneself in an enigma to render it insoluble, not to decipher it

[Ruben]

Paul, I guess the analogy would be with book:The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination|9400568]?

[Paul]

Yes. And that book is a lot better! But this one at least appears ambitious unlike many of the others on the list.

[Tommi]

Completely agreeing with Paul’s conclusion that it’s “a novel that I admired in its conception more than its execution.” Formally and conceptually it is more interesting than any other I’ve read from the longlist, but the rambling is not particularly effective.

[Paul]

To be frank it feels either badly written or badly translated. I sort of admire the judges for picking it - and at the same time wonder if they read it!

[Marina]

I thought the IBP was for a work of fiction? This one was very much non-fiction. Interesting enough for an essay, but a bit unsubstantial for a book.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

One year around a third of the longlist was at best hybrid non fiction/fiction.

[David]

I do appreciate IBP judges recognizing books that stretch the boundaries of fiction. The description of this as “a novel that I admired in its conception more than its execution” would seem to apply to several on the longlist. I'm detecting a theme.

[Roman Clodia]

I like this a lot for its ambition and its restrained passion and obsession - though I didn't understand some of the political ideology discussions, the theorists and their reference to Albania.

I thought the Nobel mentions were about drawing connections with Pasternak.

So far, my second favourite after Lost on Me out of those I've read. It probably helps to have an interest in Russian poetry of the period and know a bit about those literary circles.

[Paul]

What connection though? Given Nobel Prize nominations are a secret what makes Kadare think he is in contention. It comes across as rather vain to me.

Rather like Philip Roth who allegedly went to his agent’s office each year in preparation for his win - which I suspect is completely untrue given it would be in the early hours of the day US time.

[Paul]

id give me an excuse to include this from Alex Shepherd’s 2022 piece (same one with the Dua Lipa comparison) where he imagines the same for another perennial contender:

I have no idea if Murakami wants the Nobel Prize or if he expects it—and he shouldn’t, because he is not going to win—but I have decided to now picture Murakami doing exactly this. He laces up his running shoes. He puts on a Stan Getz record on the most expensive, minimalist stereo system you have ever seen. Pasta boils on the stove in a gleaming, spotless pot. Murakami sits by the phone in an Eames chair, and he loads YouTube and watches the announcement muted, with subtitles: some Swedish words—Jon Fosse—some more Swedish words. He steps outside and runs 22 miles without stopping.

(The year before the words Jon Fosse were indeed uttered)

[Roman Clodia]

Paul wrote: "What connection though? Given Nobel Prize nominations are a secret what makes Kadare think he is in contention. It comes across as rather vain to me."

The connection of being another writer having to contend with writing under a regime of censorship; a writer who gets phoned up by Enver Hoxha out of the blue, though the reason is apparently different from Stalin's call.

As this is filed as a novel, I'd say the narrator is a construct, not necessarily Kadare (or wholly Kadare) and it's an open secret that he's been nominated for a Nobel a number of times.