Reviews - A Dictator Calls

109 reviews for:

A Dictator Calls

Ismail Kadare

2.98 AVERAGE

sam_i_am_books_'s review against another edition

3.5

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

luhos's review against another edition

2.0

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

A Dictator Calls exists in some space between fiction and non-fiction. Kadare recounts 13 different versions of a phone call between Stalin and Russian writer Boris Pasternak that occurred (probably) in 1934, about recently arrested Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. He proceeds through the different versions, one by one, detailing from whom the accounts were made, or from what historical records the account was extracted.

While it is about the phone call - whether it happened or not, and what was said by each participant - ultimately A Dictator Calls is about power, in two forms - the power of a dictator and the power of an artist.

I very much appreciated this book, and it was a pretty quick read, but ultimately I don't think this was for me. I don't know enough about this part of history, or the characters involved, and so probably the importance of some of the events/recounts were a little lost on me.

m_peacock's review

2.25

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

About 20 pages in, I set this book down and pivoted to Boris Pasternak's Wikipedia page. It was the only thing that got me through the rest of this book. It feels more like a personal meditation, an autofiction retracing of the author's time in Moscow some 60+ years ago, than a novel. I wanted to like it. Luckily, it's a short book; otherwise it would've been a DNF. Not quite sure how this got on the 2004 Int'l Booker Prize long list.