Excelente. Uma grande descoberta pessoal, escrita de uma maneira instigante do início ao fim.

Es el segundo libro que leo de Kadaré, después de "El nicho de la vergüenza", y me ha gustado más que el primero. Mientras que en "El nicho de la vergüenza" asistimos a una crítica despiada y mordaz, no exenta de cierto humor negro, de los colonialismos centroeuropeos y de los aparatos represores del Estado, el proyecto de "Abril quebrado" es mucho más ambicioso: una descripción demoledora de la naturaleza misma del poder, bajo la forma de las leyes no escritas. La noción de "poder", con las particularidades históricas y demográficas de una Albania moderna, se asemeja bastante a la que analizó Foucault como la propiedad emergente de un sistema de relaciones. La idea clásica del poder detentado por unas minorías no asoma en las páginas de este libro; es más, ni siquiera los grandes exégetas del Kanun, con Binak Alia a la cabeza, escapan a las normas de las que persiguen cumplimiento, viéndose abocados a una vida ambulante.

Kadaré sigue fiel a un estilo equilibrado, sobrio la mayor parte del tiempo, pero emotivo y poético en algunos pasajes de gran profundidad psicológica, sobre todo a partir de la mitad del libro y en las escenas en las que se narran las desventuras del joven matrimonio Vorpsi. Como sucede con la geografía del Rrafsh, la novela está llena de momentos de estasis y vacío, de soledad con o sin compañía. En esos instantes, el buen hacer de Kadaré se manifiesta y convierte en un pasaje lleno de vida interior lo que en manos menos experimentadas sería una escena tediosa.

Hay que leer Kadaré. Y releerlo. Y volver a releerlo...

‘Broken April' is a historical fiction novel based on true facts about Albania's past. However, I thought a particular plot device, an ancient book of laws and social mores which is the source of the problems that the main character, Gjorg Berisha, endures, was a fictional invention of the author. Ffs, what real-life culture would codify into their common law rules about ritual assassinations, a cascading continuation of murder after murder of selected individuals to be passed down from generation to generation? No society would make up such an idiotic Code! Right? No, never happened! Uh, wait...

The mind-boggling discoveries I made after googling some of the elements in this translated story, written in 1978, are that ritual blood feuds actually happened in Albania's past and are STILL happening today in the rural areas and mountains of Albania. Plus, an ancient book of laws and mores, a book called the Kanun which describes how when and where these murders should occur, along with required ritual chanting which must be performed while murdering, is actually a real book STILL followed religiously by some rural villages in Albania!

The descriptions of what this ancient book contains remind me of parts of the Qu'ran, Bible and Torah, only WAY more bizarre since the laws in this book demand people follow additional social rules of ritual murder that seem insane to me. Any kind of death, whether accidental or intentional, begins an endless spiral of ritualized murder which must be performed within a year to restore the dead person's family's or village's honor. The dead person who is being avenged does not even have to be known to anyone in the village where the person died. The person who died could be a total stranger who was a temporary guest of a villager, like a thirsty traveler stopping to ask for a drink of water, who then was attacked by an unknown robber after leaving the village. The villager, not the unknown robber, becomes responsible for satisfying the Code of Blood Feud as stated in the Kanun.

Unbelievably, there is a traditional legal system set up in the participating villages of Albania to adjudicate the Code. Certain Albanian elders are judged to be sufficiently learned in interpreting the laws of the Kanun. These gentlemen are sent for whenever there is a question who should be killed in response to a death, and who should be the 'justicer', as the murderer is officially named. It does not matter if the honor murder is performed on an innocent man or a guilty one as long as the selected individual satisfies the Kanun laws and rituals. The murder must be undertaken only in certain areas of a home or a town, in certain times of the day, within a year. A person selected to be murdered can travel safely while on certain designated roads and paths, but as soon as that person leaves the 'safe' road or path, then that person can be murdered. There are also designated 'safe houses', which actually are towers made of stone built here and there across the landscape in Albania. These towers are full of ex-justicers who are now vulnerable to revenge in the chain of murders in these blood feuds. These men can never leave the tower without fearing a bullet to the head.

The Code requires that a murdered man's death must be avenged, and then that person's murder must be avenged, and then that murder must be avenged, and then that murder must be avenged, etc. Forever. Literally forever. I am not joking or exaggerating. In addition, if the murder is bungled, and only wounds are sustained by the selected person to have been murdered, then the justicer has to pay the victim a fine for each wound. Or they could count the wound as part settlement of the blood that was owed. In that case, the justicer can inflict wounds until the blood account was fully paid. Else, the clock is still ticking when the murder must occur by the justicer on the victim, and a fine is still owed the victim for each wound. Once the justicer accomplishes his blood-feud revenge murder, then he must pay a death tax to the local authorities (the authority who is in charge of collecting the blood tax is called 'The Steward of the Blood'). The justicer can be granted the short bessa - a 24-hour truce by the murdered man's family, or the murdered man's family can agree to giving the justicer a month-long truce - the long bessa. At the end of the bessa, the justicer can be killed by another appointed justicer in revenge, unless he goes to live in a tower of refuge, unable to ever leave the tower for the rest of his life.

Traditional law is a bitch, gentle reader.

Another character in the novel, Bessian Vorpsi, is a journalist. He is on his honeymoon with his beautiful wife, Diana, traveling to the high plateaus of the Albanian mountains. They both are modern urbanites, but Bessian has always wanted to see the Code at work. He thinks the Kanun is a romantic relic of Albanian history, majestic and legendary. But as their journey proceeds, he is puzzled more and more by Diana's behavior. As they pass men wearing black ribbons, the sign of the wearer being part of a blood feud and thus a walking dead man, Diana becomes withdrawn. Was it a mistake to have a honeymoon in the mountains? She did not know much about the Code, but as he explains it to her as they travel, she gets quieter and quieter. What is wrong? Does she not see it is the glorious choice of Shakespeare's Hamlet made large?



Author Ismail Kadare is probably unknown to most of us, gentle reader. But he is famous in Europe, especially in France and Albania. In 2005 he won the Man Booker International Prize. He also has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in Albania and went to University in Tirana, Albania. He attended the Gorky Institute for World Literature, a school for writers and critics in Moscow. Because of governmental disapproval of his books and other writings, he asked for and was granted asylum in 1990 in France.


At first, I believed I was reading only a historical fiction novel about the culture of Albania that existed long ago in the past, and later, as I progressed deeper into the story of 'Broken April', I thought maybe it was also a symbolic folktale of Albania because of the novel's literary architecture. No. The story is not only those things. Instead, I learned that Kadare's story about the early 20th-century Albanian mountain and village people of the past is a real-life culture of people who still live outside of the legal governmental framework of Albania as if they were in the midst of the Middle Ages and not part of the 21st century.

I read that 'Broken April' takes place between the World Wars, but it is difficult for me to believe that. The people of the Albanian plateaus live like people of the 13th century, in my opinion. The protagonists travel by horse and carriage, horseback and of course, on foot. However, on page 35, Gjorg Berisha, one of the main characters, sees an airplane in the sky flying overhead, and knows what it is. Amazing. I am still in shock by this story.




https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/05/albania-kanun-blood-fueds-smolar

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/blood-feuds-still-prevalent-in-albania-a-973498.html



Wikipedia link to a description and history of the Kanun:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanun_(Albania)



Here is a link to an interview with the author:

http://pajtimi.com/faqebrenda.php?newsID=40&lang=eng



The American version of a blood feud:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield–McCoy_feud

The story of an Albanian man who commits murder and has to suffer the consequences of the traditional law of Kanun. This book will give you insight into some old Albanian traditions.

Großartig. Definitiv ein Jahreshighlight!