This novel is set in Albania in the mid-30s, when that country was under King Zog, and lest anyone think Kadare does not have his tongue firmly in his cheek, think only for a moment on the basic premiss: two Irish-American scholars travel from the USA to the mountainous wilds of Albania, a tape recorder (a completely new invention) in hand, to record ballads sung by wandering minstrels , in an effort to prove links to Homer, or at least to explore the mechanics of the transposition of the oral to the written word. The two intrepid explorers are very excited when they record the same balladeer singing the same song on two occasions (one week apart) and they discover two lines changed in a thousand!

This is a wonderful satire of the mindless and unimaginative and artificial, and yet potentially very dangerous, world that is created by authoritarian, closed, paranoid, ignorant regimes. Kadare sets this story in the time of King Zog, but there can be no doubt that he has in mind the mindlessness of the communist regime. The Irish-Americans are, of course, assumed to be spies and this colours the reaction of almost everyone they meet, often with humourous consequences. The local governor reads their journals and, through leaps of logic, or illogic, sees proof of espionage in every passage, however innocuous. The governor’s wife is so starved for outside excitement and stimulation that she fantasizes about having an affair with one of the visitors and then is terrified lest one of them should say anything about it (though it never happened) and this would be reported by the Albanian spy (who glories in the name, Dull) who tracks every word they utter by hiding in the ceiling of their room in the very poor and rustic inn where they reside (and wonder if the scrapings in the ceiling indicate mice?)…of course all to little avail as Dull speaks not a word of English, and he tenders his resignation because he admits that he dozed-off for a minute in the ceiling and was thus guilty of dereliction of duty. Despite the veneer of authoritarian control and conformity, the passions and desires and fears and superstitions and greed of people bubble just beneath the surface and burst out in various instances. This, in fact, is why all such regimes eventually perish or undergo fundamental transformation: because they cannot create a “New Man”, they cannot re-fashion human nature and non-conformist ideas and independent thought will ever rise up.

My first Kadare and I found it refreshing. It's witty, thoughtful, and absurd, though the absurdity is most likely based on truth. Two Irish-American Harvard scholars are out to prove that homer's epics were culled from a verbal tradition, from gypsy singers. They bring with them the newly available invention, the tape recorder (or tapregorder as the Albanian governor calls it) to record the epic songs. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/743751.htm...

It is short but very deep: the tale of two ethnographers visiting Albania in the 1930s during the rule of King Zog, to record ancient epic poetry (the H in the title stands for Homer). The two ethnographers are supposed to be Irish, but might as well be Japanese for the purposes of the story: the novel is about Albania, not about Ireland. (Perhaps it was in part a response to Andrić's foreigners encountering Bosnia in The Days of the Consuls?)

But it's also about the construction of truth, how stories are told, especially when the state tries to regulate knowledge and information. Although the patriotic version of Albanian history - 1878, 1913 - is the only one told here, one senses that Kadarë himself doesn't completely buy it, and subverts it in the way he tells the story. In the meantime people escape as best they can, the rather ethereal epic poetry souight by the Irishmen in contrast with the erotic dreams of the governor's wife. A really good book, strongly recommended. ( )