[QNJ]∎ PDF The General of the Dead Army Kadare Ismail 9781566636841 Books

The General of the Dead Army Kadare Ismail 9781566636841 Books

Download As PDF : The General of the Dead Army Kadare Ismail 9781566636841 Books

The General of the Dead Army Kadare Ismail 9781566636841 Books

Rain and snow mixed together was falling on the foreign soil. The sleet had drenched the concrete of the runway of the airport, the buildings, and the guards. It made the field and the hills wet and it was was shining from the black asphalt of the highway. As though it was not the beginning of autumn, to every other person except the newly-arrived general this monotonous rain would seem a sad coincidence. He was coming to Albania from a foreign state for the withdrawal of the bones of the soldiers killed in the last world war. The talks between the two governments had started in the spring, but the final contracts were only signed at the end of August, precisely at the time when the first cloudy skies began. Therefore it was autumn and the time of rain had come. The General knew this. Before he set out he had learned, among other things, something about the climate of Albania. The general knew that in Albania autumn is humid and rainy. However even though, in the book that he had read, it was written that in Albania autumn is sunny and dry, this rain would not have seemed unexpected. Quite the opposite. And the reason was that, to him, it had always seemed that his mission could only be accomplished in rain.

Compare this to the opening paragraph in Amazons " Look Inside" preview of the Vintage Edition.

Somewhere,somehow a lot of lyricism was lost between the Albanian >French>English version.

In the Albanian the paragraph reads: "Mbi tokën e huaj binte shi dhe dëborë përzier bashkë. Sqota kishte qullur betonin e pistës së aeroportit, ndërtesat, rojat. Ajo lagte fushën dhe brigjet dhe shkëlqente mbi asfaltin e zi të xhadesë. Sikur të mos ishte fillimi i vjeshtës, çdo njeriu tjetër, përveç gjeneralit të porsaardhur, do t'i dukej ky shi monoton një koicidencë e trishtuar. Ai po vinte në Shqipëri nga një shtet i huaj për tërheqjen e eshtrave të ushtarëve të vrarë këtu në luftën e fundit botërore. Bisedimet midis dy qeverive kishin filluar që në pranverë, por kontratat përfundimtare u nënshkruan vetëm në fund të gushtit, taman në kohën kur filluan vranësirat e para. Pra ishte vjeshtë dhe shiu kishte kohën e tij. Gjenerali e dinte këtë. Para se të nisej, kishte mësuar midis të tjerave edhe diçka për klimën e Shqipërisë. Gjenerali e dinte që në Shqipëri vjeshta është e lagët dhe me shi. Por, edhe sikur në librin që kishte lexuar të shkruhej se në Shqipëri vjeshta është me diell dhe e thatë, atij nuk do t'i dukej ky shi i papritur. Përkundrazi. Dhe shkaku ishte se atij i ishte dukur gjithmonë se misioni i tij mund të kryhej vetëm në shi. "

Even as a neophyte student of Albanian I could pick up awkward phrases in this translation.


Tags : The General of the Dead Army [Kadare Ismail] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. This is the story of an Italian general, accompanied by his chaplain, charged with the mission of scouring Albania in search of the bones of their fallen countrymen,Kadare Ismail,The General of the Dead Army,New Amsterdam Books,1566636841,Fiction - General,Fiction Action & Adventure,Fiction General,Fiction: Action & Adventure,Fiction: General,General

The General of the Dead Army Kadare Ismail 9781566636841 Books Reviews

No comments.
Kadare is one of my favorite authors of all times. This novel, The General of the Dead Army, is his best novel by far. However, his other novels are fascinating as well. His stories and writing style is so distinct, probably, because his from a part of the world were not many other authors are known to the world. Enough, order this book you will not be disappointed.
Great book for all kind of readers. Has history in it, psychology, humor, picturesque. You get lost in the world created for you! You get into the hero’s heart and head and live his emotions!
The novel had its merits - it portrayed the fear of the general being in a foreign land not welcomed. But it was too brooding which concentrated on more on atmospheric feelings and didn't really develop the Albanians in the book. I think a lot of phrases got lost in translation as well. I also noticed many typos throughout the book.
Some twenty years after World War II, an Italian general embarks on a mission in Albania to retrieve the dead and buried bodies of Italian soldiers and return them to their home country and families. Accompanied by a fellow countryman priest, a local "expert," and a small staff of shovel-wielding laborers, this small party treks ceaselessly across the Albanian countryside and into the mountains. Thorughout this macabre, two-year exercise, remains are excavated, identified where possible, and stowed away in nylon plastic body bags. All the while, Albanian locals observe the goings on with a mixture of disbelief and distrust, the latter feelings arising from the perception that enemy soldiers are enemies, whether alive or dead. Thus, in their eyes, the unaware but well-intentioned general is building a new army, an army of the dead. Yet even as the Italian cohort shuttles from place to place retrieving its buried dead, a counterpart Albanian group headed by a lieutenant-general and a town mayor is undertaking the same task in a rather more scattershot way.

Great effort has clearly gone into planning the project careful negotiation between the Italian and Albanian governments, drawing up of detailed maps based on interviews with fellow soldiers and the dead men's families, and descriptions of the deceased including heights and dental records. Both the general and the priest express particular interest in finding the remains of one Colonel Z., commander of a Blue Battalion unit much reviled by the Albanians for its brutality. For the general, it is a matter of honor to retrieve a fellow officer's remains at his widow's behest, but for the priest, there are intimations of more dubious favors granted or promised.

In the project's early stages, all goes smoothly. Gradually, however, the grim nature of the task begins to wear on the general as heavily as the mountainous terrain and the unforgiving weather. He begins seeing himself as the Albanians must view him, as a commander of a steadily growing force that could be formed into sections and companies and battalions, eventually to become full regiments and divisions. He imagines himself leading those men during the war in such a way as to bring victory without their deaths and, later, he leads them to victories in battles fought by Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, all the way up to Korea and Vietnam. "Who would dare stand up to my Nylon Army?" he tells himself.

The general's grip on reality diminishes in evident proportion to his project's percentage of completion so that, as the mission nears conclusion, he loses his sense of diplomatic perspective altogether. Ignoring the priest's warnings, the general decides one evening to attend a locals' wedding in a small town. He is received cordially as custom dictates, but coldly nonetheless, and his behavior precipitates the book's climactic crisis before tensions and emotions recede to their former banality at story's end. In some ways, the general's gradual, alcohol-fueled descent into a sort of temporary madness is strongly reminiscent of Geoffrey Firmin's far more tragic, one day, alcoholic descent in Lowry's UNDER THE VOLCANO.

An interesting stylistic element of THE GENERAL OF THE DEAD ARMY is Kadare's decision to render nearly all his characters nameless. The general, the priest, the expert, the Albanian lieutenant-general and mayor, Colonel Z. - none have names, just occupational titles. Even the dead soldier whose diary the general reads is known to the locals as "Soldier." Only a few Albanians are gifted the warmth of names Christine in Soldier's diary and the gravediggers, Reiz and Lilo. Everyone else labors in anonymity, as befits the honor of the unknown dead to whose recovered remains they are attempting to reattach names.

As Kadare often does, he sprinkles his work with references to events and places in other of his novels. For example, he includes several references to the city of Gjirokaster and its citadel, to the arrival of a small band of prostitutes, and to the recovery in a downed plane of a dead English pilot's hand, all of which can be found again in CHRONICLE IN STONE. Albania is Kadare's equivalent of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, a sort of ubercharacter present in all his works. It is a place whose presence and force equals that of his human characters and seems, in fact, to shape their behaviors. For example, in describing his countrymen's warlike propensities, he writes "...the Albanians are given to war by their very nature....They hurl themselves into it with all their hearts and with eyes wide open....once they've been given a shot of it they become intoxicated...deprived of war and weapons this people would wither away, its roots would dry up and it would eventually just disappear." Yet since these words are spoken by the Italian priest by way of explanation to the Italian general, who knows if they are Kadare's views or his perspective of outsiders' views on his country?
It is one of the best novels ever written worldwide. If you have good literature taste and need to read something profound and full of metaphoric significance you have found the right novel. The messages are complex but clear. It is the book that leaves the reader the right to imagine and make his own idea of the matter. The description and the subject are treated off the finest artistic language. My invitation is to read it with your brain. As an realistic fiction has a lot of very true details about European mentality and history, but it's intelectual reach is far more extensive than Europe and it's history.
Rain and snow mixed together was falling on the foreign soil. The sleet had drenched the concrete of the runway of the airport, the buildings, and the guards. It made the field and the hills wet and it was was shining from the black asphalt of the highway. As though it was not the beginning of autumn, to every other person except the newly-arrived general this monotonous rain would seem a sad coincidence. He was coming to Albania from a foreign state for the withdrawal of the bones of the soldiers killed in the last world war. The talks between the two governments had started in the spring, but the final contracts were only signed at the end of August, precisely at the time when the first cloudy skies began. Therefore it was autumn and the time of rain had come. The General knew this. Before he set out he had learned, among other things, something about the climate of Albania. The general knew that in Albania autumn is humid and rainy. However even though, in the book that he had read, it was written that in Albania autumn is sunny and dry, this rain would not have seemed unexpected. Quite the opposite. And the reason was that, to him, it had always seemed that his mission could only be accomplished in rain.

Compare this to the opening paragraph in s " Look Inside" preview of the Vintage Edition.

Somewhere,somehow a lot of lyricism was lost between the Albanian >French>English version.

In the Albanian the paragraph reads "Mbi tokën e huaj binte shi dhe dëborë përzier bashkë. Sqota kishte qullur betonin e pistës së aeroportit, ndërtesat, rojat. Ajo lagte fushën dhe brigjet dhe shkëlqente mbi asfaltin e zi të xhadesë. Sikur të mos ishte fillimi i vjeshtës, çdo njeriu tjetër, përveç gjeneralit të porsaardhur, do t'i dukej ky shi monoton një koicidencë e trishtuar. Ai po vinte në Shqipëri nga një shtet i huaj për tërheqjen e eshtrave të ushtarëve të vrarë këtu në luftën e fundit botërore. Bisedimet midis dy qeverive kishin filluar që në pranverë, por kontratat përfundimtare u nënshkruan vetëm në fund të gushtit, taman në kohën kur filluan vranësirat e para. Pra ishte vjeshtë dhe shiu kishte kohën e tij. Gjenerali e dinte këtë. Para se të nisej, kishte mësuar midis të tjerave edhe diçka për klimën e Shqipërisë. Gjenerali e dinte që në Shqipëri vjeshta është e lagët dhe me shi. Por, edhe sikur në librin që kishte lexuar të shkruhej se në Shqipëri vjeshta është me diell dhe e thatë, atij nuk do t'i dukej ky shi i papritur. Përkundrazi. Dhe shkaku ishte se atij i ishte dukur gjithmonë se misioni i tij mund të kryhej vetëm në shi. "

Even as a neophyte student of Albanian I could pick up awkward phrases in this translation.