A review by anusha_reads
A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare

informative medium-paced

4.0

BOOK 12: A DICTATOR CALLS, ISMAIL KADARE, TR. JOHN HODGSON, LONGLISTED FOR #INTERNATIONALBOOKER2024

 I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

It is about the phone call Stalin made to Boris Pasternak, during which they discussed the arrest of Osip Mandelstam. Yes, the same Pasternak who wrote Doctor Zhivago and was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, which he was forced to decline due to the furious Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1989, his son finally accepted the prize on his father’s behalf.

What transpired between them in those three minutes? Why did he call? How did Pasternak react? Ismail Kadare beautifully narrates different versions of the same phone call—thirteen in all. It reads like an extremely well-researched document, enriched with literary gossip and anecdotes of that era.

A story often takes on the colour and tone offered by the narrator, and each narrative in this book presents a unique version.

The translation is impeccable. The idea of turning a phone call into a story is just brilliant!

Pasternak ended his first marriage to marry his then-lover, Zinaida Neuhaus, the wife of Russian pianist Heinrich Neuhaus. Zinaida’s version of the phone call was the wife’s version.

The two versions that I enjoyed reading the most were that of Anna Akhmatova and  Nadezda Mandelstam, the wife of the poet who was arrested.

It’s exhilarating to read such a rich, intellectual story about the influence/ involvement of many poets and writers of that era, including Dostoevsky, Freud, Pushkin, and many more. There are these brilliant poets and writers, juxtaposed with the authoritative dictator who had the power to vanquish the most powerful writer.

Some Quotes:

“THE TYRANT AND THE POET, HOWEVER MUCH THEY MAY SEEM OPPOSITES, BOTH HELD POWER. THE FIRST ASSOCIATIONS OF THE WORD POWER CAN ONLY BE GRIM: OPPRESSION, VIOLENCE, DISPOSSESSION. YET HUMAN LANGUAGE HAS ALSO THOUGHT OF GENTLER USAGES. POWER CAN BE USED FOR BAD ENDS, BUT AN ARTISTIC GENIUS HAS POWER, AND SO DOES A SWEET FAIR-HAIRED WOMAN.”

 

“AND A CURSORY GLANCE AT KARL MARX SHOWS THAT A MAN WHO HAD DEDICATED HIS LIFE TO THE VIOLENT OVERTHROW OF THE WORLD ORDER NEVER DEVOTES HALF A PAGE IN ANY OF HIS DOZENS OF BOOKS TO THE TRAUMA AND REMORSE CAUSED BY THE SHEDDING OF HUMAN BLOOD.”