The year: 1377. The place: the Balkan peninsula. Here in Ismail Kadare's novel,
The Three-Arched Bridge, an Albanian monk chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a great river known as Ujana e Keqe, or "Wicked Waters." If successful in their endeavor, the bridge-builders will challenge a monopoly on water transportation known simply as "Boats and Rafts." The story itself parallels developments in modern-day Eastern Europe, with the bridge emblematic of a disintegrating economic and political order: just as mysterious cracks in the span's masonry endanger the structure and cast the local community into a morass of uncertainty, superstition, and murder, so the fast-changing conditions in the 14th-century Balkan peninsula threaten to overwhelm the stability of life there.
Dark as the story itself is, Mr. Kadare's prose, skillfully translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson, is elegant, witty, and deft. And with so many twists and turns in its carefully constructed plot, this political parable keeps the reader's interest to the very end.
Ismail Kadare, born in 1936 in the mountain town of Gjirokaster, near the Greek border, is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. Since the appearance of The General of the Dead Army in 1965, Kadare has published scores of stories and novels that make up a panorama of Albanian history linked by a constant meditation on the nature and human consequences of dictatorship. His works brought him into frequent conflict with the authorities from 1945 to 1985. In 1990 he sought political asylum in France, and now divides his time between Paris and Tirana. He is the winner of the first ever Man Booker International Prize.