Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general is despatched to Albania to recover his country's dead.
Once there he meets a German general who is engaged upon an identical mission, and their conversations brings out into the open the extent of their horror and guilt, newly exacerbated by their present task. As they descend from the callous trivialities of their gruesome business, past and present, to suffering self-disgust, the author gives us glimpses of the lives of the people whose graves they are unearthing.
‘He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare's is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil’ Independent on Sunday
- ISBN10 0099518260
- ISBN13 9780099518266
- Publish Date 4 December 2008 (first published 11 October 1971)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Vintage Classics
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 272
- Language English