Review by New York Times Review
EVERY city offers residents a way to chart the well-being of their surroundings. For the Albanian city of Gjirokaster, as depicted in Ismail Kadare's tragicomic novel "The Fall of the Stone City," a misperceived rivalry between doctors becomes a barometer to assess the political gales that battered Eastern Europe during World War II and the cold war. Big Dr. Gurameto and Little Dr. Gurameto share a surname but come from different families. The former studied in Germany, the latter in Italy (though as with the comic magicians Penn and Teller, we're only privy to the speech of the big guy). Given that Albania passed from Italian to German occupation under the governments of Mussolini and Hitler, the gossips on the street look to the doctors' relative social standing as a reflection of the prevailing situation. Never mind that the doctors themselves are too busy with work to dwell on their status. A fact like that can't quiet anonymous tongues. Maneuvering into the vacuum left by the retreating Italians, German airplanes flood the city with leaflets announcing its imminent "liberation." Yet after shots are fired on German scouts, a threat is issued that the city will be blown up. More than fear, what the menfolk of Gjirokaster feel is shame. "Isn't this a sort of punishment for women?" they ask themselves. At the moment of reckoning, German tanks mass outside the city and begin firing. But their guns are silenced well before the city is razed. Rumor has it that someone waved a white flag from a rooftop. Again, a current of shame washes over Gjirokaster until another rumor arises: maybe the Germans only saw a curtain blowing through a window? In the midst of all this Big Dr. Gurameto is summoned before the German tank commander, who claims to be an old college chum. He berates the doctor for Albania's snubbing of the Reich, until the doctor retorts that his political views haven't changed since college: "I answer for my own house," he says, "not the state." Flummoxed, the Nazi insists that he, too, is the same man he was. Allowing for that faint possibility, the doctor invites him to dinner. Then the novel jumps ahead to the postwar years - yet another period of instability and outside control for Albania, as the Communists seize power from the Germans. An investigation, begun in Russia, is launched into the so-called plot of the doctors (Stalin believed that an international cabal of Jewish physicians wanted to kill off Communist leaders). The doctors are hauled in for interrogation, and Big Dr. Gurameto is asked to explain what happened during the infamous dinner - particularly how he engineered the release of 80 hos tages whom the Germans planned to execute. A delirium overtakes these proceedings; one interrogator seethes under his envy of Big Dr. Gurameto's social position and, by extension, how his gynecological practice affords him frequent contact with women. For a novel that delights in riddles - is the Nazi an impostor? what happened during the dinner? - what's most interesting apart from Kadare's use of folk tales and dreams is its gender politics. In one of the more absurdist sections, for example, society women collapse in the street after being addressed as "Comrade!" Like an unreconstructed Freudian, Kadare is fascinated by how men use ideological structures as proxy mechanisms to shore up their masculinity and carry out dominion over others. There is nothing startling here. But such is Kadare's skill as a storyteller that he renders conventional wisdom with the force of a childhood trauma. How did an Albanian doctor engineer the release of 80 hostages from the Germans? Christopher Byrd's reviews have appeared in The Guardian, The Believer and other publications. Twitter: @chris_byrd.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 5, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Traitor or hero? The people of Gjirokaster endlessly debate the role of Dr. Gurameto in hosting a regal dinner for the commander of the Nazi army invading their ancient Albanian city. Some regard the German-schooled gynecologist as a quisling who welcomed an enemy; others view him as a brave tactician who saved scores of hostages including a notable Jew from death camps. Kadare's mesmerizing novel allows readers to see how conflicting rumors about the dinner complicate the competitive relationship between Dr. Gurameto Big Dr. Gurameto and his Italian-trained rival and doppelganger, the little Dr. Gurameto, and then how these rumors acquire new virulence under the Communists who replace the Nazis as Albania's rulers. Commissioned to investigate the matter, one Shaqo Mezini interrogates Big Dr. Gurameto with a zeal incubated in his own paranoid fantasies about international medical conspiracies against Stalin. The interrogation veers further into the surreal as doubts surface as to the identity of the mysterious German colonel Dr. Gurameto feted with champagne and Schubert. As memorable as Dostoyevsky's Porfiry and Orwell's O'Brien, Mezini ruthlessly tears an opening into Dr. Gurameto's turbulent mind, loosing a flood of dark secrets rooted in childhood anxieties and sepulchral nightmares. A well-crafted translation of a European masterpiece.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In his latest novel, Kadare (The Ghost Rider) 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. This novel, set in the isolated Albanian city of Gjirokaster, covers roughly 10 tumultuous years, encompassing the Italian withdrawal and subsequent German invasion during WWII. Always aware of this historical backdrop, Kadare considers its impact on private lives. The mystery preoccupying both the city and novel centers around events of September 16, 1943, a night when "Big Dr Gurameto" hosted a dinner for Col. Fritz von Schwabe, commander of the first German division to enter Albania and old friend of Gurameto's from their college days. That party, resulting in the unexpected release of hostages held by the Germans, remains shrouded in inscrutability until Gurameto is made to account for his actions when the country's new Communist leaders force a reckoning after the war. The answer doesn't explain the circumstances of September 16 so much as shine a light on the impossibilities of negotiating the relentless press of history. 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. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An ironic, sober critique of the way totalitarianism rewrites history, from an Albanian author who's long been the subject of Nobel whispers. The novel opens in 1943, as the Nazis are poised to move into Albania, retaking the country from Italy and invading the city of Gjirokastr. The locals are understandably restless, and an advance party is fired upon. Hostages are taken, and bloodshed seems inevitable. But in an effort to calm tensions, a leading doctor, Gurameto, meets with the Nazi commanding officer, Col. Fritz von Schwabe, who also happens to be an old college classmate. The loose plot of Kadare's novel (The Accident, 2010, etc.) turns on the question of what exactly happened at that meeting. Various theories circulate among the citizenry: the invasion was all about locating and handing over a prominent Jew, Gurameto was angling for a governorship, the Albanians were being punished for their own incursions into Greece, and so on. Through these stories, Kadare explores the way people project their own nationalistic anxieties and prejudices onto every situation; the lyrics of a local bard turn the events into a kind of folklore. Kadare's omniscient view emphasizes political processes at the expense of characterization, but if we don't get to know the doctor, the colonel or the residents very well, Kadare is still a potent storyteller, and as the story jumps to 1944 and then to 1953, he reveals the grim consequences of dictatorships on identity. The tail end of the novel focuses on Stalinist interrogators' efforts to bully and torture the truth about the meeting out of Gurameto, and his refusals don't symbolize heroism so much as resignation--a realization that the facts will never be clear in the face of anti-democratic thuggery. A harsh but artful study of power, truth and personal integrity.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
