The Fall of the Stone City

One of the most important voices in literature today * * Metro * *
A master storyteller -- John Carey
One of the world's greatest living writers -- Simon Sebag Montefiore
There are very few writers alive today with the depth, power and resonance of this remarkable novelist * * Herald * *
His fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny - his historical allegories point both to the grand themes and small details that make up life in a restrictive environment. He is a great writer, by any nation's standards * * Financial Times * *
One of the great writers of our time * * Scotsman * *
Ismail Kadare has sometimes been compared with Kafka, and you can see why * * Scottish Mail on Sunday * *
There are books which seem less the second-time round; Kadare's seem more . . . one can relish his mastery of tone and the tireless probing intelligence of narrative -- Allan Massie * * The Scotsman * *
Both in his deployment of material and in his vision of life, Kadare is the equal of the often invoked Kafka * * Literary Review * *
Ismail Kadare is a great writer, by any nation's standards * * Financial Times * *
He is seemingly incapable of writing a book that fails to be interesting * * New York Times * *
One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language * * Wall Street Journal * *
Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness * * Los Angeles Times * *
An outstanding feat of imagination delivered in inimitable style, alternating between the darkly elusive and the menacingly playful -- Peter Carty * * Independent on Sunday * *
This novel is a perfect showcase for [Kadare's] wonderfully powerful, eccentric storytelling -- Kate Saunders * * The Times * *
Brilliant but unsettling * * Irish Mail on Sunday * *
The Fall of the Stone City is written with a persuasive lightness of touch. Kadare's authorial tone is invariably ironic and his fiction is playful, as if he has never lost sight of exactly how ridiculous humankind tends to be * * Irish Times * *
A mysterious and masterful novel that captures a pivotal moment in Albania's history * * Independent * *
[Kadare] is on brilliant but unsettling form here * * The Mail on Sunday * *
The story is a tragic-comic satire of the inhuman senselessness of the Albanian (and any other) dictatorship . . . [Kadare's] work gives a unique insight into the history of this, the strangest corner of Europe -- Edward James * * Historical Novel Society * *
A dreamworld where history and fiction come together. . . Ismail Kadare's subject, as always, is the presence of the past. . . more astonishing and truthful than any mere documentary chronicle * * Guardian * *
In his latest novel, Kadare features many of his motifs-bloody Balkan histories; bleak totalitarianism lives under silky threads of magical realism-that have made him a perpetual shortlister for Noble Prize laureate. A thoughtful exploration of the colluding forces of fascism and communism and a country caught between them that is at once obscure and enigmatic, lucid and insistent * * Publishers Weekly * *
Mesmerizing. . . A well-crafted translation of a European masterpiece * * Booklist (starred review) * *
A harsh but artful study of power, truth and personal integrity... [The Fall of the Stone City is] an ironic, sober critique of the way totalitarianism rewrites history, from an Albanian author who's long been the subject of Nobel whispers * * Kirkus Reviews * *
The Fall of the Stone City is playful, supremely sarcastic, mystifying, charming and bleak, by turns and all at once. Kadare raises ambiguity to an art form, and perfectly evokes the uncertainties of life under arbitrary rule * * New Zealand Herald * *