A disturbing mix of tragedy, comedy, politics and sexuality, Chronicle
in Stone is a fascinating early masterpiece from the winner of the
inaugural Man Booker International Prize.
Ismail Kadares classic novel of a boys coming of age in the midst of the horrors of war, in a stunning new translation.Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city. Through the boys eyes, we see the terrors of World War II as he witnesses fascist invasions, allied bombings, partisan infighting, and the many faces of human crueltyas well as the simple pleasures of life. When he is evacuated to the countryside, he expects to find an ideal world full of extraordinary things, but discovers instead an archaic backwater where a severed arm becomes a talisman and deflowered girls mysteriously vanish.Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is both a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit that will remind readers of Cinema Paradiso and Empire of the Sun.From the Trade Paperback edition.
'Chronicle in Stone is stunning, the quintessential tale of war seen through a child's eyes.' - Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
Author
About Ismail Kadare
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokaster, in the south of Albania. He studied in Tirana and Moscow, returning to Albania in 1960 after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union. Translations of his novels have since been published in more than forty countries, and in 2005 he became the first winner of the Man Booker International Prize.
David Bellos, Director of the Program in Translation at Princeton University, is also the translator of Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual and a winner of the Goncourt Prize for biography. He has translated seven of Ismail Kadare's novels, and in 2005 was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for his translations of Kadare's work.
