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A review by ajkhn
The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare
5.0
I've read a lot of Kadare at this point, and I'm starting to wonder if there has ever been a sunny day in Albania. This book is very similar to The Siege, in that it's about war, it's brutality, and its aftermath. The plot, following an Italian general 20 years after World War II, really goes in to the guts of how war affects small towns, in both Italy and Albania.
The growing creepiness of the plot reminds me of some of Roberto Bolano's short stories and Marcin Wrona's film The Demon. By the time you meet the one-armed German (?) general, you know things are about to get very awful, very quickly.
Kadare does a great job managing the pacing of the book to build a couple different crescendoes — once you think you're safe, it gets a bit more terrifying by the end. Not in a full-out horror way, but again in a magical-realist, unsettling, sort of way. I really enjoyed this book, and if you want to read a World War II book that's less about heroism and more about devastation, it's for you as well.
The growing creepiness of the plot reminds me of some of Roberto Bolano's short stories and Marcin Wrona's film The Demon. By the time you meet the one-armed German (?) general, you know things are about to get very awful, very quickly.
Kadare does a great job managing the pacing of the book to build a couple different crescendoes — once you think you're safe, it gets a bit more terrifying by the end. Not in a full-out horror way, but again in a magical-realist, unsettling, sort of way. I really enjoyed this book, and if you want to read a World War II book that's less about heroism and more about devastation, it's for you as well.