[In the following review, Elsie evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Pesha e kryqit, arguing that the volume lacks Kadare's traditional “loftier vision of things.”]

In no other city of Albania has the fight for survival been harder than in rocky Gjirokastër near the Greek border. If Korçë in the southeast was blessed with a relative degree of prosperity (in Albanian terms) and Shkodër in the north knew how to survive the buffets of fate with a certain Mediterranean levity and nonchalance, Gjirokastër epitomized the struggle and severity of being. This struggle is ingrained in the Gjirokastrian mentality. Its people are go-getters, competitive and successful and perhaps, as their detractors note, somewhat less generous and hospitable than elsewhere—not as bujar, as the Albanians would say.

Gjirokastër on the mountainside under the glaring southern sun has given birth to two figures of note, who, though vastly different in their activities and talents, have set indelible marks on twentieth-century Albania: the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha (1908-85) and the writer Ismail Kadare (b. 1936), born a mere two hundred meters from each other in houses, as Kadare tells us, linked by a street called Sokaku i të Marrëve (Alley of the Insane).

Pesha e kryqit (The Weight of the Cross) is Kadare's second work published in Parisian exile. It was originally conceived of as an appendix to Ftesë në studio (Invitation to the Studio; 1990; see WLT 66:1, p. 180) and, no doubt for this reason, the two works are published together in the French-language edition here. These two volumes plus Nga një dhjetor në tjetrin (From One December to Another; Fr. Printemps albanais; 1991; see WLT 66:1 p. 180) constitute, at any rate, a sort of politico-literary trilogy. Although Pesha e kryqit is no less spiteful and acrimonious than the earlier two works, it does, at the same time, reveal many other facets of Kadare's personality, in particular his personal anguish and suffering during the direful years of living hell for Albanian intellectuals. It is the autobiography of a novelist under Stalinism who managed to publish his works but was never really certain what reaction the demigods of the Politburo, and in particular the Omnipotent himself, would take. Though it was Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur (1963; Eng. The General of the Dead Army, 1990; see WLT 65:1, p. 746) which brought Kadare international fame, he tells us quite convincingly that it was Dimri i madh (The Great Winter; 1977; see WLT 62:3, p. 493) which ensured his physical survival. Enver Hoxha appreciated the portrait made of him in The Great Winter and did not wish to jeopardize it. Kadare's liquidation would have been incompatible with the survival of the novel, a friend of the writer notes. Some of Kadare's other works never saw the light of day at all and are only now being discovered.

Albanians look up to Ismail Kadare as the literary “prince of the nation” in the hope that he can give written expression to the trauma which they endured for almost half a century and which will linger on with them for many years to come. Indeed, Kadare has succeeded in casting light on the inconceivably grim realities of “people's power,” though in a highly personal and subjective manner.

What the critical reader will miss in the present work is a loftier vision of things. This is what separates Pesha e kryqit from the classics of East European liberation literature. The world of Kadare remains focused entirely on the personal dichotomy he creates between his “friends” and his “sworn enemies.” Nowhere does he make reference to the wounded soul of the nation, to the weight of the cross borne by his people during forty-six years of mute horror, or even to the much more concrete agony of many of his fellow writers and artists. He is at all moments too obsessed—and can one blame him?—with his own survival. Only time will tell if Kadare can extricate himself from his personal trauma and use his eloquent voice and talent to express what still must be said.