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m_peacock 's review for:

A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare
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.