A Dictator Calls
Kadare’s relentless examination of the anecdote makes it oddly less resolved by the end of A Dictator Calls than it seemed at the outset, like a literary Rubik’s Cube he has turned over and over without making much progress. If anything, I suspect the reader’s sympathies will migrate to Pasternak.
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The book is also not really a novel. It’s more like a cross between memoir, dream diary and historical investigation, in which Kadare trawls through reported versions of what was said during the phone call, with meditations on truth, creativity and tyranny ... Not an easy read ... At some point you start to ask yourself what the point is of this seemingly infernal game of Chinese whispers. But the climate of uncertainty that Kadare constructs with this many-versioned phone call reflects the uncertainty of life under authoritarian rule.
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Relies on a number of specific moving parts to discuss much larger ideas, making it a bit difficult to discuss due to several cart-before-the-horse problems ... Powerful.
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