Ismail Kadare’s ‘The Palace of Dreams’ Published in Serbian Language

TIRANA, August 24

The people that have lived under dictatorships can feel and understand better the metaphors and symbols related to such regimes, and it is easier when novels and literary works are offered to them in their own languages. This is the case of ‘The Palace of Dreams’ (Pallati i Enderrave) novel by Ismail Kadare that recently was published in the Serbian language.
The novel isn’t about dreams or maybe it is. Everything is hazy and dark and the entire novel is shaped based on the worst kind of dreams. It is a nightmare that has been used as the main metaphor for the living hell that Albania turned into during the Communist regime.
The writer himself once said that this is his most courageous book.

“He creates a special institution that deals with the collection, classification and interpretation of dreams in the empire, into an enclosed system of oriental despotism at the time of Ottoman Turkey, as a vision of hell of a totalitarian state,” b92 reported.
History has shown that people fear the totalitarian system and the latter fears the former. Therefore, it claims control over everything, including their dreams, as they can hide some unknown calamity for the future.

“It was really amazing and wondrous that in the Stalinist Albania, where the whole culture was under ideological control while the canons of socialist realism ruled in literature, suddenly a writer with such a modern expression as Kadare imposed himself,” Kosovo-based art critic and analyst Shkelzen Maliqi said about the novel.
Kadare’s works are translated into more than 32 languages while he has been awarded the prestigious European Prize for Literature, the French Legion of Honor and many other renowned awards and prizes.

News Source/Photo Credit: b92