Broken April

Review\nWritten with masterly simplicity in a bardic style....With Broken April, Mr. Kadare comes to the forefront as a major international novelist. ― The New York Times\n…Powerful, old-fashioned fiction almost Dostoevskian in its dark vision. ― Kirkus\nOne of contemporary fiction's greatest prose lyricists. ― The Philadelphia Inquirer\nIn Broken April, Kadare achieves a precise and delicate balance of wonder and horror, simplicity and irony....[Kadare] is an accomplished storyteller with a keen sense of literary history. ― The Christian Science Monitor\nKadare's voice is a voice unlike any other in contemporary fiction. The Nobel can't come a moment too soon. ― Kirkus\nA major international novelist. -- Herbert Mitgang ― The New York Times\nOne of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language. ― The Wall Street Journal\nIsmail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture―its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer. -- Professor John Carey, Committee Chair, Man Booker International Prize 2005\nIsmail Kadare's fiction has been compared with that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Certainly he induces that same ironic double-take in his readers, by means of the child's magical view of life that is larger than most adults realize -- Leonie Caldecott ― The New York Times\nWriting like this is hard to stop quoting, it is musical not only in rhythms, but in its most elemental perceptions. ― Nation\nAlbania's most valuable literary export: the novels of Ismail Kadare. -- Ken Kalfus ― Village Voice Literary Supplement\nAlbania's Kadare is probably the premier writer of fiction to have emerged from the Balkan countries since Bosnian Nobel-winning novelist Ivo Andric. ― Kirkus\nA great writer. ― Booklist\nKadare's prose glimmers with the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. ― Los Angeles Times\nTwo destinies intersect in Broken April. The first is that of Gjorg, a young mountaineer who (much against his will) has just killed a man in order to avenge the death of his older brother, and who expects to be killed himself in keeping with the provisions of the Code that regulates life in the highlands. The second is that of a young couple on their honeymoon who have come to study the age-old customs of the place, including the blood feud.
While the story is set in the early twentieth century, life on the high plateaus of Albania takes life back to the Dark Ages. The bloody shirt of the latest victim is hung up by the bereaved for all to see—until the avenger in turn kills his man with a rifle shot. For the young bride, the shock of this unending cycle of obligatory murder is devastating. The horror becomes personified when she catches a glimpse of Gjorg as he wanders about the countryside, waiting for the truce of thirty days to end, and life with it. That momentary vision of the hapless murderer provokes in her a violent act of revulsion and contrition. Her life will be marked by it always.