16. A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare
translation: from Albanian by John Hodgson (2023)
OPD: 2022
format: 230-page paperback
acquired: library loan read: Mar 23-26 time reading: 4:09, 1.1 mpp
rating: 3½
genre/style: Contemporary novel theme: Booker2024
locations: Moscow 1934
about the author: An Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright, born 1936 in Gjirokastër, Albania

The first I've read from the 2024 International Booker longlist, one of several very short books on the list. The nice thing about short books is I can get through them quickly, which means I can get to them even though I haven't planned to. The problem is I can finish them before I have really figured out what it is I'm reading. That was certainly the case here.

This “novel” is Kadare thinking through a phone call between Joseph Stalin and Boris Pasternak. Stalin called Pasternak in June of 1934 and asked about the recent arrest of poet Osip Mandelstam. Pasternak, probably in a panic, apparently dodged the question. Stalin made a critical comment on how he himself would do a lot more to help his own comrades. Then he hung up, never available to Pasternak again.

Pasternak and Mandelstam, both from Jewish families, were friends and fellow poets. Their friendship seems to have survived this phone call and the wide knowledge of it. Mandelstam would die imprisoned in 1938. The reputation-smeared Pasternak would win the Nobel Prize in the 1950's.

Kadare spent time in Soviet Union in the 1960's, before he was forced to leave when the Albanian dictator, Enver Hoxha, broke with Stalin's successors. He wrote a novel about these experiences in the 1970's ([Twilight of the Eastern Gods], 1978), one of the Kadare novels that were "smuggled out" of Albania. What is semi-clear here is that Kadare relates to Pasternak. He experienced one out-of-the-blue phone call from Hoxha and found himself unable to say anything other than thank you. That is, Kadare is writing a lot about himself and his own art. The book, however, focuses on and mulls over this one phone call from several different angles. He seems to be writing about power, fear, and art, and it reads more like an inconclusive essay on these things than a novel. And it wasn't clear to me where it intended to go. Within his path, he comments on writers, bashes the communist states, and criticizes Marx for not providing guidance on how to psychologically recover from a consequences of a successful revolution.

Mainly, though, it creates for the reader some of the sense of living under the absolute power of a tyrant, the sense of being toyed with by a tyrant aware of whimsical torment he is creating but can't be hurt by. Stalin playing games with Pasternak for his own amusement echos through Pasternak's reputation and legacy.

I should have condensed all that down because I still haven't said whether the book is any good. I'm not sure how good the book is. It probably has a great deal of weight within the right context, but for me it was merely readable and curious. It's entertaining enough for Kadare and Booker completists and the curious.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/358760#8488097 ( )

My second book from Kadare (I read [book:The Successor|17895] a few years ago).

I do not love Kadare's style, I find it rather dry and dull. Mostly, though, I think I just do not know the political context of his writing, so I really understand only the surface. Which I find dull.

Here, I have heard of Pasternak and Mandelstam, and obviously Stalin. I know that all of the account are by people who have reason to say what they do. But that's it. I don't understand effect what Mandelstam's arrest had on Russians, or what Pasternak's response would make Russians think. I don't know how all of this affected Albania/Albanian writers/artists. And I do not have the bandwidth nor interest in researching all of this to truly understand this book. ( )

Isamail Kadare offers a promising title and subject only to disappoint with baseless speculations which range from Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya being KGB, CIA or both to Boris having had an affair with Anna Akhmatova. “Tosh,” as one friend put it. His comments on tyrants and poets are excellent. But these are tiny gems in a book which appears to have been dashed off and published on the weight of the author’s literary reputation. Sad. I do not recommend this book. ( )