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A review by anca_m
Broken April by Ismail Kadare
2.0
I think it's obvious from the time it took me to finish this tiny book that I wasn't exactly crazy about it - I didn't hate it but it didn't make me eager to steal some minutes here and there for reading either.
The kanun, the law of the land in old Albany, is the central part of this novel. Three storylines give us majorly different perspectives on it - the foreigner, the direct participant and the supervisor. It freaked me out a bit, probably because this book focuses so much on its bloody parts, concerning gjakmarrja. This tongue-twisting word is the name for a sort of vendetta that in most cases is started by the murder of a guest. This offense is above all other offenses and it gives the host the right (and obligation!) to revenge the murderer which in turn gives the right to the murderer's family to revenge his murder and so on.. entire generations being wiped out this way. I resonated the most with Diana - the foreigner - to whom this idea sounds perfectly silly and pointless, but in the end, I'm sure a lot of Romania's (and any other country's) traditions sound the same to outsiders.
Towards the end the storyline started to draw me in and I was rooting for Gjorg or at least . The whole experience reminded me of Romanian books I read in highschool - they had their good parts and I didn't hate them but I didn't love them either.
The kanun, the law of the land in old Albany, is the central part of this novel. Three storylines give us majorly different perspectives on it - the foreigner, the direct participant and the supervisor. It freaked me out a bit, probably because this book focuses so much on its bloody parts, concerning gjakmarrja. This tongue-twisting word is the name for a sort of vendetta that in most cases is started by the murder of a guest. This offense is above all other offenses and it gives the host the right (and obligation!) to revenge the murderer which in turn gives the right to the murderer's family to revenge his murder and so on.. entire generations being wiped out this way. I resonated the most with Diana - the foreigner - to whom this idea sounds perfectly silly and pointless, but in the end, I'm sure a lot of Romania's (and any other country's) traditions sound the same to outsiders.
Towards the end the storyline started to draw me in and I was rooting for Gjorg