The Ghost Rider

by Ismail Kadare, Jon Rothschild (Translator), David Bellos (Translator), David Bellos (Introduction)

Overview

An old woman is awoken in the dead of night by knocks at her front door. The woman opens it to find her daughter, Doruntine, standing there alone in the darkness. She has been brought home from a distant land by a mysterious rider she claims is her brother Konstandin. But unbeknownst to her, Konstandin has been dead for years. What follows is chain of events which plunges a medieval village into fear and mistrust. Who is the ghost rider?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847673411
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	05/20/2010
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	220
Sales rank:	984,253
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Born in 1936, Ismail Kadare is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005 he was awarded the first Man Booker International Prize for 'a body of work written by an author who has had a truly global impact'. He is the recipient of the highly prestigious 2009 Principe de Asturias de las Lettras in Spain.

Editorial Reviews

Man Booker International Prize–winner Kadare (Broken April) takes an ancient Albanian tale, "The Ballad of Constantine and Doruntine," as the starting point for this compelling if enigmatic novel set in medieval Albania. The deaths of the nine Vranaj brothers, all soldiers, many felled by a plague carried by their battlefield adversaries, have devastated a small Albanian community. Their mother's loss is only compounded by the absence at the time of her daughter, Doruntine, who was married three years earlier and moved far away from home. When Doruntine suddenly appears at her mother's door, claiming that one of her brothers, Kostandin, was her traveling companion, the news that Kostandin has been dead for years sends both mother and daughter to their deathbeds, leaving the local police captain to try to explain the inexplicable. Kadare excels at depicting the ever-expanding repercussions of what could have been a tragedy limited just to the Vranaj family. (June)

Publishers Weekly

His fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny - his historical allegories point both to the grand themes and small details that make up life in a restrictive environment. He is a great writer, by any nation's standards.

Financial Times - Ben Naparstek

Ismail Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness.

Los Angeles Times

A master storyteller.

John Carey

One of the great writers of our time.

Scotsman

One of the most important voices in literature today.

Metro - Alan Chadwick

Spooky and intellectually challenging.

The Herald on Sunday