The Doll

An essential work.The Doll is mesmerising, and like Kadare’s family home conceals both darkness and flashes of light in its interior -- Nilanjana Roy * Financial Times *
The poignant observation, bitter irony and misspoken fear running through the narrator’s central relationship with his mother, a woman secretly terrified of being disowned as unworthy the moment her son achieves the fame he so desires, are what dominate this fascinating study of a difficult love. -- John Burnside * Guardian *
In a properly ordered world, Ismail Kadare would by now have got the Nobel prize for literature. By any reckoning, he is one of the most important living European writers, a man whose work is as compelling as any novelist to have emerged from the vanished world that was the Communist bloc -- Melanie McDonagh * Evening Standard *
Laconic, sinister and drily funny... Miss this fatalistic, deadpan wit, well served in John Hodgson’s nicely crafted translation, and you miss something essential in Kadare. -- Boyd Tonkin * Spectator *
Albania's greatest living novelist has invariably explored his country’s repressive political legacy in his strange and brilliant novels... [The Doll] can only enrich our understanding and appreciation of Kadare’s writing. * Daily Mail *
An evocative, captivating story. Every word of this short book is there for a reason. The considered, precise language (translator John Hodgson has done a fine job) leads smoothly through various – no doubt carefully selected – life events with The Doll being the thread which holds it all together... It’s a category-defying feat of literary engineering by a writer who is totally in control. * Bookmunch *
A master storyteller * John Carey *
[A] coldly brilliant novel -- Kevin Brazil * Times Literary Supplement *
A novelist of dazzling mastery * Independent *
One of the world's greatest living writers