Elegy for Kosovo: A Novel

Amazing book!

The novel is a little short and makes you wish the author had expanded it a little more. Kadare is a master of historical novels. His message is clear: people of the Balkan have much more in common than they realize, but often they focus of their hatred rather than their common enemy. This novel is an analogy of the current situation in the Balkan. Kadare seems to dislike the word Balkan, and wishes the Balkan people would have found a name of their own for their peninsula, rather than allow the Turks to name it. I enjoyed this book.

The prose in this books is worth its reading. A historical event mixed in with poetic prose and fantasy. Worth reading again and again.

good read

The French philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal once suggested that we "imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of man." It is also the image of Kosovo and the rest of the Balkans painted so vividly by Albanian poet and writer Ismail Kadare in his masterfully imagined "Elegy for Kosovo". Elegy consists of three inter-related stories centered on a famous battle that took place in Kosovo more than 615 years ago. On June 28, 1389 a combined army of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Romanians waged a fierce battle against an Ottoman-Turkish army in Kosovo on the Field of the Blackbirds. The battle was seen as one in which the combined Balkan armies fought on behalf of Christian Europe to halt the surging westward expansion of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman army, led by Sultan Murad I was victorious. The Sultan was killed on the day of the battle and was buried in Kosovo. Ironically, despite their victory the Turks never followed up on this victory and did not return to the region for another 150 years. The first part of the story takes us from the night before the June 28, 1389 battle and through the battle itself. In the camp of the combined army on the eve of the battle peoples who have long fought each other prepare to fight a common enemy. Old animosities are forgotten temporarily. The soldiers and officers, drinking perhaps too much, demand that their minstrels sing songs to prepare them for battle. The minstrels (who serve as narrators of the first two stories) sing battle songs but they are songs in which the Serbs speak of the horrid Albanians, and the Albanians sing songs of the hated Serbs. When asked why they rely on these old songs the minstrels respond that songs take long to change than alliances. The second part begins at the end of the battle. The minstrels, along with the others, are devastated by the loss and begin wandering west. The Balkans were considered the `fringe' of Europe by Europeans even them. As they wander, some of the old animosities come back. They face hunger, suspicion, persecution and the occasional act of kindness. The third part, "The Royal Prayer" is the most moving of the three. As noted, the victorious Sultan Murad I was killed at the battle and buried in Kosovo. This story is narrated in the voice of Murad's spirit, locked in his tomb. We read of his watching as the same battles rage around him, unresolved, for six hundred years. He catches snippets of information from newspapers tossed aside near the tomb. "From these I learn what is going on all around. The surprising names of viziers and countries: NATO, R. Cook, Madeline Albright. The slaughter of children in Drenice." The more things change. Kadare has said, in commenting on the symbolic importance of the 1389 battle that "on the six hundredth anniversary of the battle in 1989, Milosevic launched the first massacre of Kosovars, and started the explosion of Yugoslavia." Kadare says, in the second elegy, that "[t]he Serb's eyes were filled with the same tragic laments. Both men were prisoners, tied to each other by ancient chains, which they could not and did not want to break." As seen through the eyes of Ismail Kadare the chains that bind the people of the Balkans are old, strong, and not easily broken. The beauty of his prose highlights the tragedy of what he describes. Some may challenge Kadare's viewpoint or suggest he bears, as an Albanian, the prejudices of his ancestors. As an outsider all I saw was an exposition in beautfully constructed prose on a tragedy whose beginning cannot be traced and whose ending cannot be seen.

When the Ottoman Empire broke up in the early 20th century, it wasn't a neat process. It happened over a number of years and nobody, especially the Turks, agreed on how it was to be done. That's why, when after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, when Albania was created from former Turkish territories, the Serbian and Greek victors of the two wars knocked off some pieces and called them home. In post-WW II Yugoslavia at least, some recognition was given to the fact that the region known as Kosovo had a large majority of Albanian inhabitants. Yugoslavia, that goulash of a country, could incorporate them too without anyone saying that it was totally unreasonable. Maybe the Albanians had other ideas, but after looking at Enver Hoxha's despotic rule in next-door Albania, few had aspirations to join it. But when Tito died and the various nationalities of Yugoslavia began to develop visions of independence, the Albanians of Kosovo too harbored their desires. Here they ran smack into a solid wall of Serbian opposition for the Serbs believed this Albanian-populated land to be the heart of their historic legend, not to mention the home of a Serbian minority who had been there for centuries. Albanian-Serb-Albanian-Serb---who had the rights there ? This question had rankled for centuries despite the Turkish rule that kept them both down. By the time the 90% Albanian Kosovo decided it was time to separate from Serbia and the ultra-nationalistic policies of the demagogic Milosevic, Serbia in turn decided that Kosovo was definitely theirs still. A war broke out, Europe and the US got involved, refugees, bombing, and at last, a new small state in the Balkans appeared. Why all this anger and violence ? Where did it start, how to account for the Balkanizing tendencies of those "Balkans" who never called themselves that but were labelled as such by other Europeans, more fortunate in their choice of enemies. Kadare has written this short allegorical essay. It is brilliant, it is multi-layered, full of wit and the tragedy of nationalist rivalries. How different are Serb, Albanian, Turk, Romanian, Bosnian, Bulgar, Greek, Macedonian and Roma ? Don't they have a lot in common ? Didn't they all die together on the field of Kosovo in 1389 when the Turkish army smashed the united Balkan forces ? Those forces never united again. This is an elegy indeed, not for any one person, but for two nations that can never get along, neither of whom possesses all the right and none of the wrong. The songs of the Albanians and the Serbs mirror each other. Doesn't every unity have a reflection ? So, every unity can be a duality as well. Enough said. Another great book from Kadare.

Ismail Kadare was truly a genius. He managed to summarize all the Balkans and their souls/strugglrs in 100 or more pages. Truly a gifted man and a wonderful book