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A review by annrose_007
Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur by Ismail Kadare
4.0
A tale of war, men and bones. An Italian general is sent on a mission to Albania to dig up the remains of their soldiers who died during the Fascist invasion.
"When all is said and done, can a pike of bones still have a name? ".The gloomy novel takes through the ubiquitous melancholy and meaninglessness left behind by war and the author uses the descriptions of Albanian landscape to bring out the same. "Down the centuries, there can be no people that has experienced a sadder destiny. That is what accounts for the roughness, the harshness we see today".
I think it is a mark of Kadare 's brilliance that how in his narrative he draws up the quintessential masculine temperament of war without explicitly alluding to, but through his tokenistic placement of women characters. Women become the sufferers of war horrors and loss. Kadare achieves a war novel without any accounts of a battle being fought, trenches being dug or men getting killed. This is a story of graves and humans left behind.
Just like the thoughts of the General which gets muddled towards the ending, the writing goes a little lop-sided. So the later portions of the novel aren't as engaging as the rest.
"When all is said and done, can a pike of bones still have a name? ".The gloomy novel takes through the ubiquitous melancholy and meaninglessness left behind by war and the author uses the descriptions of Albanian landscape to bring out the same. "Down the centuries, there can be no people that has experienced a sadder destiny. That is what accounts for the roughness, the harshness we see today".
I think it is a mark of Kadare 's brilliance that how in his narrative he draws up the quintessential masculine temperament of war without explicitly alluding to, but through his tokenistic placement of women characters. Women become the sufferers of war horrors and loss. Kadare achieves a war novel without any accounts of a battle being fought, trenches being dug or men getting killed. This is a story of graves and humans left behind.
Just like the thoughts of the General which gets muddled towards the ending, the writing goes a little lop-sided. So the later portions of the novel aren't as engaging as the rest.