- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins (1 Feb 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002712792
- ISBN-13: 978-0002712798
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,999,233 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Palace Of Dreams (Vintage Classics)
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Review
"Kadare's most daring novel, one of the most complete visions of totalitarianism ever committed to paper" Jean-Christophe Castelli, Vanity Fair. "If there is a book worth banning in a dictatorship, this is it" Julian Evans, Guardian. "Kadare's delicately misted view of another world (as much internal as totalitarian) lives up to the splendour of his title" Julian Duplain, Independent on Sunday.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Julian Duplain, Independent on Sunday
Kadare’s delicately misted view of another world (as much internal as totalitarian) lives up to the splendour of his title
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.
Ismail Kadare's "The Palace of Dreams" is a book that reads like Kafka as influenced by the painter M.C. Escher with a bit of "1001 Arabian Nights" thrown in for good measure.
Ismail Kadare is an Albanian poet and writer. He is also the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and was selected from a list of nominees that included Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Naguib Mahfouz, Milan Kundera, and Gunter Grass. The Palace of Dreams is one of his best known, many say best, work.
"Palace of Dreams" is set some time in the 19th-century in an Islamic-ruled Ottoman Empire that includes the Balkans (including Kadare's native Albania). The Palace of the title is a mammoth office building where the dreams of everyone in the kingdom are submitted for analysis. It is a Byzantine bureaucracy whose complexity is matched only by the dark, complex hallways and byways of the building itself. The Sultanate considers the dreams of his subjects to contain clues to the future. Like an oracle of Delphi, dreams are interpreted to predict plots against the Sultan or threat to the Empire generally. The interpretation of dreams is a powerful tool used to run the Empire and control its citizens and as a result the Palace of Dreams is the most feared agency in existence.
Into the Palace of Dreams steps a young new employee, Mark-Alem. Mark-Alem is a member of the Quprili family. The Quprilis are a powerful family of Albanian origin. For generations the family has produced high-ranking Viziers, the approximate equivalent of Cabinet Ministers, to the Sultan. Although a powerful family the Quprili's relationship over the years with various Sultans has been rocky and has been marked by purges and bitter in-fighting. The tenuous relationship between the Quprilis and the Sultan forms the backdrop of the story.
After Mark-Alem makes his way through a maze of corridors he is taken on as an apprentice. He quickly moves from a clerical position, sorting dreams, to interpreting them. Kadare's writing is very powerful as he traces Mark-Alem's path as an employee on the fast-track. One can feel the job beginning to overwhelm Mark-Alem's thoughts and actions. What seemed as unreal to Mark-Alem as an apprentice now seems commonplace. In a certain sense Kadare portrays vividly one person's descent into a claustrophobic, mystical hell where dreams are more real than reality.
At the same time renewed tensions between the Sultan and the Quprilis emerge. One specific dream involving a bridge in Albania built by the Quprilis hundreds of years ago quickly becomes the centerpiece of the plot. This same bridge played a critical role in an earlier Kadare novel, "The Three-Arched Bridge". Mark-Alem finds himself faced with analyzing this dream and the consequences of that interpretation drives the last third of the novel.
Palace of Dreams has been doubly-translated, first from Albanian to French and then from French to English. Despite that it felt as if I were reading the book in its original language. Entering Palace of Dreams was like entering a dream itself, one that quickly turns into a nightmare. As I read the description of Mark-Alem wandering, lost, through the hallways of a dimly lit Palace of Dreams I could feel the increasing despair welling up in Mark-Alem. The credit for that must be attributed to Kadare but with a significant nod to the translators who kept the writing both fresh and as disturbing as it appears to have been intended.
Kadare's The Palace of Dreams is well worth reading.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book follows Mark-Alem, a member of the Quprilis, a very important family in an Empire under a totalitarian regime, who starts working in the Tabir Sarrail. Known as the Palace of Dreams, the Tabir Sarrail is a kind of government department that catalogues and interprets all the dreams that the people report as the dreams sometimes include prophecies. As Mark-Alem rises in the Palace's hierarchy, he learns about its purpose, the most important one being the choice and interpretation of the Master-Dream, one which has consequences to the state or its rulers and for that is presented directly to the state's Sovereign, the Sultan.
The story is always told from Mark-Alem's point of view, and the reader learns everything as he does, understanding the event as they unravel around him. In the beginning, the author seems to concentrate in making the reader understand Mark-Alem, his thoughts, his habits, his insecurities, his family and his work. But after a while, the plot thickens as it focuses on the relationships between the Quprili family and the Tabir Sarrail, as Mark-Alem himself starts to understand what happens inside the Palace of Dreams, building up to the moment where he understands how far the rulers will go acting solely on what has been interpreted in a dream. Kadare still keeps a surprise to the very end of the book, which you may predict if you were paying attention to the details all the way from the very beginning.
It was very interesting to read a story that although being obviously about a totalitarian regime that even oversees people's future acts, is different from the usual for keeping within one character's point of view and focusing on his specific story, having no reference to heroes that fight it, to apocalyptic situations or even to the fall of the sovereign's regime as could be expected. Kadare manages to convey how one feels living under the control, being part of the very "machine" that keeps said control and still playing your part as if there was no other chance or there was no conscience of consequence. A notion that reminds me of surviving rather than living, that shows how the true, absolute control can be achieved. The text itself is easy to read and the story develops at just the right speed, being neither too slow nor overwhelmingly rushed to the end.
The Palace of Dreams wasn't one of my favourite books and I'm not about to read all that Ismail Kadare wrote but I did like it and I'd recommend it to people that enjoy stories based on dystopian dictatorships as Orwell's 1984 but don't mind a bit of fantasy as brought here by the prophetic dreams.
The story is always told from Mark-Alem's point of view, and the reader learns everything as he does, understanding the event as they unravel around him. In the beginning, the author seems to concentrate in making the reader understand Mark-Alem, his thoughts, his habits, his insecurities, his family and his work. But after a while, the plot thickens as it focuses on the relationships between the Quprili family and the Tabir Sarrail, as Mark-Alem himself starts to understand what happens inside the Palace of Dreams, building up to the moment where he understands how far the rulers will go acting solely on what has been interpreted in a dream. Kadare still keeps a surprise to the very end of the book, which you may predict if you were paying attention to the details all the way from the very beginning.
It was very interesting to read a story that although being obviously about a totalitarian regime that even oversees people's future acts, is different from the usual for keeping within one character's point of view and focusing on his specific story, having no reference to heroes that fight it, to apocalyptic situations or even to the fall of the sovereign's regime as could be expected. Kadare manages to convey how one feels living under the control, being part of the very "machine" that keeps said control and still playing your part as if there was no other chance or there was no conscience of consequence. A notion that reminds me of surviving rather than living, that shows how the true, absolute control can be achieved. The text itself is easy to read and the story develops at just the right speed, being neither too slow nor overwhelmingly rushed to the end.
The Palace of Dreams wasn't one of my favourite books and I'm not about to read all that Ismail Kadare wrote but I did like it and I'd recommend it to people that enjoy stories based on dystopian dictatorships as Orwell's 1984 but don't mind a bit of fantasy as brought here by the prophetic dreams.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Kadare succeeds in this novel by weaving together the fabrics of nightmarish surrealism and the reflections of a trapped subject to portray the fear and paranoia generated by a communistic ideal, his own world.
This is classic Kadare, creating both apprehension and anticipation. A haunting allegory which leaves you questioning the boundaries where real meets surreal.
An excellent read.
This is classic Kadare, creating both apprehension and anticipation. A haunting allegory which leaves you questioning the boundaries where real meets surreal.
An excellent read.
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