Three Elegies For Kosovo (Panther) [Paperback]

"The main goal of these three fables... is to transmit a message about freedom, in the sense that to write truthfully is to set something free. In this book Kadare has set Kosovo, the battle, the myth, free from the chains of untruth" - Julian Evans, London Review of Books. "The bridge is a foreboding, an omen, a threat. It is a bridge over which Asia will invade Europe and the future will invade the past. Kadare, an Albanian, has used the materials at hand to become one of Europe's great writers" - Los Angeles Times. "An utterly captivating yarn: strange, vivid, ominous, macabre and wise" - New York Times.

In three short narratives, Kadare evokes a defining moment in European history: a quarrel that has simmered for six centuries.

Translated from the Albanian by Peter Constantine

On 28 June, 1389, a Christian army made up of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Romanians was defeated by an Ottoman army. The battle was over in ten hours. But ever since, the birds of prey have been hovering above the battlefield to pick over the corpses. It was on 28 June, 1989, that the Serb Leader Slobodan Milosevic launched his campaign for a fresh massacre of the majority population of Kosovo, the Albanians. That was the day on which Yugoslavia began its process of implosion and post-War western Europe was first revisited by the barbarity of earlier epochs.

The agony of one tiny population at the close of the 20th Century is the symptom of a sickness that European civilisation has carried in its bloodstream for a thousand years.

In three short narratives, Kadare evokes a defining moment in European history: a quarrel that has simmered for six centuries.

Translated from the Albanian by Peter Constantine

'He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare's is an original voice, universal yet rooted in his own soil.' Shusha Guppy, Independent on Sunday

A quarrel that has simmered for six centuries, stemming from a battle that changed the course of history.

28 June 1389, the Field of the Blackbirds. The Christian army - made up of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Romanians - confronts an Ottoman army led by Sultan Mourad. In ten hours the battle is over, and the Muslims possess the field; an outcome that has haunted the vanquished ever since. These legends of betrayal and the symbols of defeat have continued to define the national identities of each race.

28 June 1989, the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic launches his campaign for a fresh massacre of the Albanians, the majority population of Kosovo.

In three short narratives Kadare evokes that first defining moment in European history, identifying how the agony of one tiny population at the close of the twentieth century is a symptom of the sickness that European civilisation has carried in its bloodstream for six hundred years.

ISMAIL KADARE was born in 1936 in the Albanian mountain town of Gjirokaster near the Greek border. He is Albania's best-known poet and novelist and his work has been translated world-wide.

In Albania, he established an uneasy modus vivendi with the Communist authorities for a time, but eventually their attempts to turn his reputation to their advantage drove him, in October 1990, to seek asylum in France.

He is the winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize.