spinesinaline's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
what does any of it mean
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Infidelity, Car accident, and Sexual content
Moderate: Murder
nwhyte's review against another edition
3.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3395342.html
I have generally enjoyed Kadarë's work, but I'm afraid this left me rather unexcited and confused. The story is about an Albanian couple who dies in a freak car accident; we explore what they know about each other, and the woman's other loves; perhaps it's all a metaphor for the international flirtations of post-Communist Albania, but if so it's a bit clumsy and also not all that apt (post-Communist Albania has been pretty firm in its affections).
I have generally enjoyed Kadarë's work, but I'm afraid this left me rather unexcited and confused. The story is about an Albanian couple who dies in a freak car accident; we explore what they know about each other, and the woman's other loves; perhaps it's all a metaphor for the international flirtations of post-Communist Albania, but if so it's a bit clumsy and also not all that apt (post-Communist Albania has been pretty firm in its affections).
ellenrhudy's review against another edition
3.0
Ismail Kadare's The Accident is a brief novel that explores, sometimes obliquely, the ways stories are told, how relationships develop and shift over time, and the life of Albanians following the collapse of Communism. The story centers on the accident of the title, which is detailed in the first of the novel's three sections. A man and a woman leave a hotel and get into a taxi for the airport. Something happens – something distracts the driver – and he goes off the road. The man and woman are seen in the air, sometimes clinging to one another, sometimes seperate. Both die. The driver survives, but is unable to describe what he saw that caused the accident, other than to say, time and again, that just before the accident the man and woman tried to kiss.
There doesn't appear to have been any foul play, but because the accident is a strange one it is marked as an “unclassified” type, which gives to it a longevity as Serbian and then Albanian spy agencies come across the file, and later as a researcher opens the file and tries to understand the nature of the relationship between the man and woman. The attention given to the accident is remarkable; as Lisa Hill writes in her fantastic and detailed review of the novel, the novel shows the “excess of agents and analysts with not enough to do after Tito had gone and Yugoslavia had been dismembered.” See how the accident is forgotten, briefly, before being brought back to life by these young Balkan governments:
Kadare's prose here is marked by its opaqueness. When one researcher – the one who provides us much of the lovers' story, as he can imagine it from reading their letters, speaking to friends, piecing together their movements over the years – details their affair, the language of it is often combative, not so dissimilar from the language of war. Much as the novel centers on and spins off of the central event of their accident, the lives of the lovers Besfort Y. and Rovena St. spin around the collapse of Hoxha's Communist government, that shared history explaining, for some, their off-and-on relationship. For Rovena St., the end of the dictatorship is imagined as a sort of dividing line, not just between past and present but between the impossible and the possible.
As the researcher reconstructs their relationship, Besfort Y. and Rovena St. reference their relationship in regards to Albanian folklore and Cervantes. Mystifying references in their letters to meeting “post-mortem”, and descriptions of their meetings that suggest they have shifted from romance to the relationship of that between a call girl and her client, become easier to understand when viewed through the lens of attempts at reconstruction. Sensing their relationship is coming to an end, the lovers attempt to find some new way of understanding their relationship, a new way of being. This is, as Lisa wrote in her review, not so different from the attempts of new Balkan nations to build themselves after achieving a first or reformulated independence. There are depths to which every relationship is unknown and remains unknowable, or appears differently to each person, as Kadare suggests via the very structure of the novel, in which certain sections are acknowledged to be entirely imagined. And yet, there is also the suggestion that all these things can be tethered to another, older story, that there is a reference point for each and every story, as with Besfort Y's request for three days' leave from work, just before his death.
At end, The Accident is an elliptical and often frustrating novel. These frustrations, though, are coupled with moments of intense beauty. Though Kadare offers no clear guide to his goals with the novel – though there is no real path to understanding the relationship of Besort Y. and Rovena St., or the interest of the spy agencies with their accident, or the interest of the researcher in the couple's story – he does offer a story that is as gorgeous as it is baffling, as it shifts through time and space and myth in seeking an answer to this couple's story. That there doesn't seem to be an answer, that their lives are as enigmatic at the end of the research as they were in the moments following their deaths, doesn't weaken the novel, but rather serves as encouragement and inspiration to explore it for a second time.
There doesn't appear to have been any foul play, but because the accident is a strange one it is marked as an “unclassified” type, which gives to it a longevity as Serbian and then Albanian spy agencies come across the file, and later as a researcher opens the file and tries to understand the nature of the relationship between the man and woman. The attention given to the accident is remarkable; as Lisa Hill writes in her fantastic and detailed review of the novel, the novel shows the “excess of agents and analysts with not enough to do after Tito had gone and Yugoslavia had been dismembered.” See how the accident is forgotten, briefly, before being brought back to life by these young Balkan governments:
Three months later, the archivist could not hide his astonishment when the governments of two Balkan countries, one after another, asked to inspect the file on the accident at kilometre marker 17. How could the states of this quarrelsome peninsula, after committing every possible abomination known to this world – murdering, bombing, setting entire populations at each other's throats and then deporting them – find the time, now that the madness was over, instead of making reparations, to enter into such minor matters as unusual car accidents?
Kadare's prose here is marked by its opaqueness. When one researcher – the one who provides us much of the lovers' story, as he can imagine it from reading their letters, speaking to friends, piecing together their movements over the years – details their affair, the language of it is often combative, not so dissimilar from the language of war. Much as the novel centers on and spins off of the central event of their accident, the lives of the lovers Besfort Y. and Rovena St. spin around the collapse of Hoxha's Communist government, that shared history explaining, for some, their off-and-on relationship. For Rovena St., the end of the dictatorship is imagined as a sort of dividing line, not just between past and present but between the impossible and the possible.
The rattling of the chains dragging the dictator's statue through the centre of Tirana kept interrupting her thoughts. It was this sound, louder than any earthquake, that divided past from present. Everything that had once been impossible had suddenly become real, such as his invitation over dinner, a week after they had met, to a three-day conference in a Central European city.
As the researcher reconstructs their relationship, Besfort Y. and Rovena St. reference their relationship in regards to Albanian folklore and Cervantes. Mystifying references in their letters to meeting “post-mortem”, and descriptions of their meetings that suggest they have shifted from romance to the relationship of that between a call girl and her client, become easier to understand when viewed through the lens of attempts at reconstruction. Sensing their relationship is coming to an end, the lovers attempt to find some new way of understanding their relationship, a new way of being. This is, as Lisa wrote in her review, not so different from the attempts of new Balkan nations to build themselves after achieving a first or reformulated independence. There are depths to which every relationship is unknown and remains unknowable, or appears differently to each person, as Kadare suggests via the very structure of the novel, in which certain sections are acknowledged to be entirely imagined. And yet, there is also the suggestion that all these things can be tethered to another, older story, that there is a reference point for each and every story, as with Besfort Y's request for three days' leave from work, just before his death.
He could not forget what a colleague had said a long time ago, when he first mentioned the inquiry to him. In such cases of law, the English refer to remote history, Muslims to the Qur'an and emergent African states to the Encylopedia Britannica, but in the Balkans they find every precedent with little effort in their ballads. Three days' leave to carry out a duty, normally something left undone? There will certainly be a well-known paradigm for this.
At end, The Accident is an elliptical and often frustrating novel. These frustrations, though, are coupled with moments of intense beauty. Though Kadare offers no clear guide to his goals with the novel – though there is no real path to understanding the relationship of Besort Y. and Rovena St., or the interest of the spy agencies with their accident, or the interest of the researcher in the couple's story – he does offer a story that is as gorgeous as it is baffling, as it shifts through time and space and myth in seeking an answer to this couple's story. That there doesn't seem to be an answer, that their lives are as enigmatic at the end of the research as they were in the moments following their deaths, doesn't weaken the novel, but rather serves as encouragement and inspiration to explore it for a second time.
blackoxford's review against another edition
2.0
Balkan Irony?
Nothing happens in the Balkans which isn’t significant to someone. Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Militant Atheists and their respective nationalities rub up against each other with considerable cultural friction. Small things become big things at the drop of an archduke or a rotating presidency. The region itself is largely the result of historical accident. So even the most random traffic accident could have dramatic implications. Or at least that is the theory of the Albanian and Serbian national intelligence agencies which vie with one another to be the first to discover what these implications might be.
This is life in the Balkans. An epistemological culture of suspicion and nationalistic one-up-manship. To be caught napping while some rival unearths domestic scandal is a profound disgrace. Especially in the case of two Eurocrats who conducted a pan-European affair for twelve years in every capital city and every first class hotel on the continent, and end up dead when their taxi crashes over a barrier. The potential embarrassment would be incalculable if they had been up to something political. What if The Hague Tribunal were to become involved? Who would be safe then? No, dedicated investigation at any cost in such a situation is demanded.
This is not an un-encouraging set-up for a thriller of international intrigue or a parody of cultural rivalry. Unfortunately it deteriorates rapidly into what appears to be a melodramatic allegory. Rovena, the Albanian woman who desperately wants to be wanted by the European diplomat, Besfort, who plays her relentlessly for years. She tries other lovers, even Swiss women, but she can’t rid herself of the idea of being one with him. Besfort has a recurring dream about being an aide to Stalin. He seems only to value Rovena for listening to him about his dreams (well, that and the sex, which has a peculiar Romany puissance apparently). Is this about real people or countries?
The account of years of tediously repetitive break-ups and descriptions of increasingly bizarre sex, do not constitute a coherent narrative. Perhaps the point is to suggest the lack of progress in achieving Albanian integration with either its Balkan neighbours or the European Community. Or perhaps it is just a pointless sexual melodrama. The centrality of the idea of the last forty weeks of the couple’s lives is a mystery, perhaps known only to Albanian folklorists, as with so much more of this opaque and boring book. So perhaps there are indeed events that occur in the Balkans that have no real import after all - for anyone.
I’m also open to the view that Kadare’s novel is one big send-up, an obscure form of Balkan irony. Other suggestions are also welcome.
Nothing happens in the Balkans which isn’t significant to someone. Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Militant Atheists and their respective nationalities rub up against each other with considerable cultural friction. Small things become big things at the drop of an archduke or a rotating presidency. The region itself is largely the result of historical accident. So even the most random traffic accident could have dramatic implications. Or at least that is the theory of the Albanian and Serbian national intelligence agencies which vie with one another to be the first to discover what these implications might be.
This is life in the Balkans. An epistemological culture of suspicion and nationalistic one-up-manship. To be caught napping while some rival unearths domestic scandal is a profound disgrace. Especially in the case of two Eurocrats who conducted a pan-European affair for twelve years in every capital city and every first class hotel on the continent, and end up dead when their taxi crashes over a barrier. The potential embarrassment would be incalculable if they had been up to something political. What if The Hague Tribunal were to become involved? Who would be safe then? No, dedicated investigation at any cost in such a situation is demanded.
This is not an un-encouraging set-up for a thriller of international intrigue or a parody of cultural rivalry. Unfortunately it deteriorates rapidly into what appears to be a melodramatic allegory. Rovena, the Albanian woman who desperately wants to be wanted by the European diplomat, Besfort, who plays her relentlessly for years. She tries other lovers, even Swiss women, but she can’t rid herself of the idea of being one with him. Besfort has a recurring dream about being an aide to Stalin. He seems only to value Rovena for listening to him about his dreams (well, that and the sex, which has a peculiar Romany puissance apparently). Is this about real people or countries?
The account of years of tediously repetitive break-ups and descriptions of increasingly bizarre sex, do not constitute a coherent narrative. Perhaps the point is to suggest the lack of progress in achieving Albanian integration with either its Balkan neighbours or the European Community. Or perhaps it is just a pointless sexual melodrama. The centrality of the idea of the last forty weeks of the couple’s lives is a mystery, perhaps known only to Albanian folklorists, as with so much more of this opaque and boring book. So perhaps there are indeed events that occur in the Balkans that have no real import after all - for anyone.
I’m also open to the view that Kadare’s novel is one big send-up, an obscure form of Balkan irony. Other suggestions are also welcome.
cdimond63's review against another edition
2.0
A mans view of love - not a fan but the guy can write.
epictetsocrate's review against another edition
3.0
Întâmplarea nu avea nimic neobişnuit. Un taxi căzuse într-o prăpastie la kilometrul 17, pe şoseaua care ducea spre aeroport. Cei doi pasageri muriseră în accident, iar şoferul, grav rănit, fusese dus în comă la spital.
În procesul-verbal făcut de poliţişti erau consemnate câteva lucruri care se scriu în mod frecvent în asemenea împrejurări: numele victimelor – un bărbat şi o femeie tânără, ambii cetăteni albanezi –, numărul de înmatriculare al taxiului împreună cu numele şoferului austriac, precum şi împrejurările sau, mai exact, faptul că nu se ştia mare lucru despre accidentul acela. Nu se găsise nici o urmă de frânare sau de lovitură, oricât de atent fusese examinată maşina. Era clar că, în timpul mersului, se apropiase de acostament, ca şi când şoferul ar fi pierdut brusc controlul maşinii, după care se răsturnase în prăpastie.
Un cuplu de olandezi al căror automobil se aflase în spatele taxiului declarase că maşina din faţă părăsise fără nici un motiv evident şoseaua, se izbise de parapet şi se dăduse peste cap. Deşi şocaţi, cei doi olandezi reuşiseră să surprindă nu numai căderea maşinii în gol, ci şi deschiderea uşilor din spate prin care pasagerii fuseseră aruncaţi afară din taxi.
Un alt martor, şofer pe un camion Euromobil, declarase cam tot aceleaşi lucruri.
Un al doilea proces-verbal încheiat la o săptămână după accident, la spital, după ce şoferul îşi revenise, în loc să clarifice lucrurile, le băgase şi mai mult în ceaţă. După afirmaţia şoferului potrivit căreia nimic neobişnuit nu se petrecuse în clipele dinaintea accidentului, cu excepţia… poate… a oglinzii retrovizoare… care, probabil, îi distrăsese atenţia, anchetatorul îşi pierduse complet răbdarea.
Întrebat de mai multe ori ce văzuse în oglindă de ajunsese să piardă controlul volanului, şoferul nu a fost în stare să precizeze nimic în plus. Intervenţia medicului, care îi ceruse anchetatorului să nu-l obosească pe pacient, nu-l impresionase deloc pe ofiţer. Ce văzuse în oglinda retrovizoare, cu alte cuvinte ce lucruri neobişnuite se petrecuseră pe bancheta din spate, astfel încât să-l facă să-şi piardă controlul? Pasagerii se încăieraseră ori, dimpotrivă, se lăsaseră prinşi în jocuri erotice?
În procesul-verbal făcut de poliţişti erau consemnate câteva lucruri care se scriu în mod frecvent în asemenea împrejurări: numele victimelor – un bărbat şi o femeie tânără, ambii cetăteni albanezi –, numărul de înmatriculare al taxiului împreună cu numele şoferului austriac, precum şi împrejurările sau, mai exact, faptul că nu se ştia mare lucru despre accidentul acela. Nu se găsise nici o urmă de frânare sau de lovitură, oricât de atent fusese examinată maşina. Era clar că, în timpul mersului, se apropiase de acostament, ca şi când şoferul ar fi pierdut brusc controlul maşinii, după care se răsturnase în prăpastie.
Un cuplu de olandezi al căror automobil se aflase în spatele taxiului declarase că maşina din faţă părăsise fără nici un motiv evident şoseaua, se izbise de parapet şi se dăduse peste cap. Deşi şocaţi, cei doi olandezi reuşiseră să surprindă nu numai căderea maşinii în gol, ci şi deschiderea uşilor din spate prin care pasagerii fuseseră aruncaţi afară din taxi.
Un alt martor, şofer pe un camion Euromobil, declarase cam tot aceleaşi lucruri.
Un al doilea proces-verbal încheiat la o săptămână după accident, la spital, după ce şoferul îşi revenise, în loc să clarifice lucrurile, le băgase şi mai mult în ceaţă. După afirmaţia şoferului potrivit căreia nimic neobişnuit nu se petrecuse în clipele dinaintea accidentului, cu excepţia… poate… a oglinzii retrovizoare… care, probabil, îi distrăsese atenţia, anchetatorul îşi pierduse complet răbdarea.
Întrebat de mai multe ori ce văzuse în oglindă de ajunsese să piardă controlul volanului, şoferul nu a fost în stare să precizeze nimic în plus. Intervenţia medicului, care îi ceruse anchetatorului să nu-l obosească pe pacient, nu-l impresionase deloc pe ofiţer. Ce văzuse în oglinda retrovizoare, cu alte cuvinte ce lucruri neobişnuite se petrecuseră pe bancheta din spate, astfel încât să-l facă să-şi piardă controlul? Pasagerii se încăieraseră ori, dimpotrivă, se lăsaseră prinşi în jocuri erotice?
fmspqr's review against another edition
1.0
Definitely a book with three faces. I was really intrigued by the first part, I could not care less about the second part and the last part was plainly weird. For sure not on par with his best books (the three-arched bridge; the pyramid; the general of the dead army
sheelal's review against another edition
1.0
i stopped reading it. the translator's rhetoric reminded me of a much watered down orhan pamuk, but the structure was repetitive and boring.