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“... not unerring. In Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, for example, which he translated from the French of Jusuf Vrioni, he has an old woman ‘chime in’: ‘Everything’s gone to wrack and ruin, mark my words. I’ve been around for many a long year, God knows …’ Whether or not that passes for authentic demotic speech in the corridors of the French ...”

“... English versions of his novels have been translated from translations into French by the Albanian Jusuf Vrioni. But Kadare is worth reading for the peepholes he opens into what it’s like to be Albanian – his own mind-set being one of them. He was born in 1936 in the reign of King Zog – the period of The File on H. He is a poet as well as a ...”

“... Ismail Kadare knew what was coming six years ago. ‘The Albanians have kept extremely calm in Kosovo,’ he told me, ‘because they know that the Serbs are only waiting for a sign of provocation to start a terrible massacre. Milosevic is biding his time. All his plans are ready. He is encouraged by the passivity of the European nations and the US ...”