Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243358 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
From the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April. Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive. The bride's heart goes out to Gjorg, and even these 'civilised' strangers from the city risk becoming embroiled in the fatal mechanism of vendetta.

About the Author
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in the Albanian mountain town of Girokaster near the Greek border. He is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. He established an uneasy modus vivendi with the Communist authorities until their attempts to turn his reputation to their advantage drove him in October 1990 to seek asylum in France.

Customer Reviews

Murder by law
Kadare's `BA' is a novel that skilfully contrasts the attitudes of its different characters to acts of violence. The highlands of Albania, in which the book is set, were ruled by the Kanun, a set of laws governing crime and punishment. The central character, Gjorg, comes from a family which is feuding with its neighbours, and the interpreters of the Kanun have determined that Gjorg is permitted to kill a member of that family. When he does so, his life also becomes forfeit, and he has only a month to live. The book opens with the murder Gjorg commits. On his way to pay the blood tax, Gjorg encounters an intellectual, Bessian, and his new wife, Diana. Bessian is taking her on a tour of the highlands, and he is extolling the virtues of the Kanun as a legal system. His cold-hearted approach contrasts sharply to her visceral horror of the endless chain of killings. Thus Kadare skilfully blends three attitudes towards Gjorg's inevitable murder by relatives of the man he killed. Gjorg is resigned because it is law, Bessian believes that it is good, and Diana feels nothing but horror.
Kadare's book raises questions of right and wrong, crime and punishment, that reach far beyond the Albanian highlands. `BA' forces the reader to examine what violence means when violence is enshrined in law, as it is in countries with corporal or capital punishment. I found `BA' to be an easy read in terms of style, but difficult in terms of content. It is a bleak book, necessarily so, but don't let that put you off. It is though provoking, simple yet effective, and a well-constructed parable, and well worth a read.

Chilling.
This novel is set in the author's native Albania, in its bleak and fierce High Plateau. In the early 20th century the writ of central government does not run up there, and the mountain communities live by their own centuries-old law, the Kanun, which regulates every aspect of their lives. In particular, this code regulates and indeed insists upon blood-feuds. Every killing must be avenged, and that includes the killing of the avenger. Once an extended family is drawn into such a feud, therefore, honour demands that there is effectively no end to it. A killer is safe only during the bessa, the period of one month following a killing. When the bessa has expired, he is doomed. He even has to wear a black ribbon on his sleeve to show the rest of the world that his life is forfeit. Only by immuring himself for the rest of his life in one of the dark towers (or kullas) dotted over the landscape, could he escape. The novel begins with the story of Gjorg, who has been forced to avenge his brother's death, and who now cannot expect to live through the whole of the month of April.

Into this world intrudes a newly-married couple from the city, Bessian and Diana. Bessian has written extensively about the Kanun, and his idea of a honeymoon is to take his young wife to the High Plateau to show her something of the life that has obsessed him for so long.

It seems to me that Bessian and Diana represent two sides of the author himself. Bessian is fascinated by the majestic primitivity of the mountain people; he finds a rationale in the blood-feud enjoined by the Kanun, and, because so many people are involved with it, he sees fatalist acceptance frequent early and sudden deaths giving a kind of intensity to life. In some of his other powerful novels (The File on H, The Three-Arched Bridge, The General of the Dead Army), Kadare shows a similar Romantic fascination with a society of Noble Savages - savage, it need hardly be said, in a violent sense that is a million miles away from their peaceful Rousseauesque prototypes! Only the laws of hospitality redeem this society somewhat, though even here the Kanun seems positively to glory in its extremism and irrationality. Then, in Diana, Kadare shows, I suspect, the other side of his personality: perhaps some sense of guilt about this very fascination. In his treatment of Diana, Kadare is still a Romantic: she cannot or will not find the words with which to confront her husband's obsession. But her muteness conveys better (and more artistically) her sense of horror than any more articulate and rational exposition of it could do.

The whole book is a work of artistry: the chilling, rain-soaked and largely featureless uplands, the dour mountain folk who inhabit them, the intricacy and implacability of the Kanun are all brilliantly described.

A haunting and gripping book
A dark thriller set in Albania's Northern Plateau in the inter-war years. Gjorg finds, despite himself, that he is trapped in a blood feud which has consumed the lives of so many of his family for several generations. His path crosses with that of a rich playboy couple from Tirana, whose honeymoon in the mountains ends up being more adventurous than they bargained for.

I couldn't put this book down. It is not exactly light reading - in fact it's bloody depressing - but it's plot doesn't let you go and confirms Kadare's position as a master.