A review by dukegregory
Agamemnon's Daughter: A Novella & Stories by Ismail Kadare

3.0

Two novellas and a story, really. I'm not as invested in Kadare when he's in his totalitarian allegory mode, but I do really enjoy the second novella here, The Blinding Order. Kadare's prose curates an atmosphere: omnipresent dread, subconscious betrayal, erotic discomfiture, unresolvable powerlessness. The titular novella is too short and anticlimactic, though the psychological consideration of life as a political object in an authoritarian regime proves rich and specific yet timeless and beyond place. The Blinding Order is the gold standard here. Kadare's interweaving of the contemporary and the arcane always strikes me in its precision. He writes prosaic fables. "The Great Wall" is a nonevent. The recognition of warring groups having very dissimilar logics for perpetual warfare amuses, but Kadare doesn't bring as much insight as he normally does.