Ismail Kadare

Each night, from 1,900 provincial offices throughout the empire, the dreams of its subjects are brought to the vast and labyrinthine Tabir Sarrail to be sorted and interpreted. The ultimate in intelligence agencies, it anatomizes the empire's subconscious for embryonic hints of discontent and disorder. Each week, the most portentously significant of the dreams is sent to the Sultan, to whose security the Sarrail is more important than the Army or the police.

Ismail Kadare is, in many ways, among the most problematic of major writers in contemporary Western letters. But that shouldn't prevent readers from savoring "The Siege" for what it is, a significant work by an important, fascinating author. Though he works completely within the context of the West's mainstream 20th century literature, Kadare's perspective is that of a writer preoccupied with the themes and history of his native land, Albania.

THE new novel by Ismail Kadare, who won the 2005 Man Booker International Prize, begins with a time-honored narrative device: a corpse. And not just any corpse. On a cold December morning in 1981, the anointed successor to Albania's current dictator is found in his bedroom with a bullet in his brain. The official verdict is suicide. The public, which already has seen the regime take a chain saw to its political deadwood on numerous occasions, suspects murder.

POP MUSIC Farewell to 2006 Dance music is the draw at Southland festivities. Page 3 JAZZ Sublime singer England's Claire Martin makes a belated area debut. Page 6 BOOKS Lauded Albanian In any language, Ismail Kadare is a great novelist. Page 16 *--* Ask Amy...14 DVDs...8 Comics...19-21 TV grid...18 *--*

If we knew what the future held, we might be less eager than President Clinton to build a bridge to it. Perhaps we would widen the river. Tragedy to our American mind--to the extent that our mind regards it--is still what you advance out of. Through much of the history of much of the world, it has been what you advance into, helplessly. The bridge in Ismail Kadare's "The Three-Arched Bridge" is a foreboding, an omen, a threat.

When he became Egypt's pharaoh 4,600 years ago, Cheops hinted to his scandalized courtiers that he, unlike his predecessors, might not build a pyramid. It is the opening irony in Ismail Kadare's mordant political parable (Cheops' Great Pyramid is 480 feet high and covers 12 acres). Only the opening one, though. "The Pyramid" is an iron mille-feuille: multilayered, finely honed and lethal. Advance from Page 1 to Page 16, for example.

POP MUSIC Farewell to 2006 Dance music is the draw at Southland festivities. Page 3 JAZZ Sublime singer England's Claire Martin makes a belated area debut. Page 6 BOOKS Lauded Albanian In any language, Ismail Kadare is a great novelist. Page 16 *--* Ask Amy...14 DVDs...8 Comics...19-21 TV grid...18 *--*

Europe's last Stalinist leadership suffered two devastating blows Thursday when Albania's most influential writer and reformer "demanded" asylum in France and its Balkan neighbors put it on notice to loosen the nation's political shackles. Ismail Kadare, a revered poet, writer and reform advocate, accused Tirana's Communist leaders of disillusioning the people with empty promises of change.

Two archeologists equipped with a cumbersome tape recorder arrive in a northern Albanian province in the 1930s. They have come to capture the recitations of the last few mountain bards, heirs of an oral epic tradition going back to Homer. Their project sets off a series of paranoid janglings and clownish cross-purposes in a society as isolated then as it has been virtually ever since. The Albanian legation in Washington advises the interior minister that the two men could be spies.

Ismail Kadare is, in many ways, among the most problematic of major writers in contemporary Western letters. But that shouldn't prevent readers from savoring "The Siege" for what it is, a significant work by an important, fascinating author. Though he works completely within the context of the West's mainstream 20th century literature, Kadare's perspective is that of a writer preoccupied with the themes and history of his native land, Albania.

ISMAIL KADARE is customarily hailed as Albania's greatest writer. This is probably true, but since few other writers from that isolated nation are even known to the rest of the world, it's not all that much of a compliment.

THE new novel by Ismail Kadare, who won the 2005 Man Booker International Prize, begins with a time-honored narrative device: a corpse. And not just any corpse. On a cold December morning in 1981, the anointed successor to Albania's current dictator is found in his bedroom with a bullet in his brain. The official verdict is suicide. The public, which already has seen the regime take a chain saw to its political deadwood on numerous occasions, suspects murder.

What is Albania? During the mid-1980s, our image was of a country hunkered down behind the inscrutable wall of its Communist tyrant Enver Hoxha. Albania was the Tibet of Europe, swathed in fabrics of language and culture unidentifiable to the uninitiated. The war in Kosovo changed all that. CNN taught us that Albania was part of the Balkans, that its people were part of a larger European Muslim population (who knew there were Muslims in Europe?).

FLUDD By Hilary Mantel; Henry Holt: 192 pp., $13 paper What does it mean to be sophisticated? What does it mean to be a sophisticated writer, for surely Hilary Mantel, author of "The Giant O'Brien" and many other novels, is just that. She is wry, like Oscar Wilde, but takes on the most earnest of subjects in her books; in "Fludd," that's nothing less than the placement of faith and its power to transform.

Two archeologists equipped with a cumbersome tape recorder arrive in a northern Albanian province in the 1930s. They have come to capture the recitations of the last few mountain bards, heirs of an oral epic tradition going back to Homer. Their project sets off a series of paranoid janglings and clownish cross-purposes in a society as isolated then as it has been virtually ever since. The Albanian legation in Washington advises the interior minister that the two men could be spies.

If we knew what the future held, we might be less eager than President Clinton to build a bridge to it. Perhaps we would widen the river. Tragedy to our American mind--to the extent that our mind regards it--is still what you advance out of. Through much of the history of much of the world, it has been what you advance into, helplessly. The bridge in Ismail Kadare's "The Three-Arched Bridge" is a foreboding, an omen, a threat.

FLUDD By Hilary Mantel; Henry Holt: 192 pp., $13 paper What does it mean to be sophisticated? What does it mean to be a sophisticated writer, for surely Hilary Mantel, author of "The Giant O'Brien" and many other novels, is just that. She is wry, like Oscar Wilde, but takes on the most earnest of subjects in her books; in "Fludd," that's nothing less than the placement of faith and its power to transform.

ISMAIL KADARE is customarily hailed as Albania's greatest writer. This is probably true, but since few other writers from that isolated nation are even known to the rest of the world, it's not all that much of a compliment.

When he became Egypt's pharaoh 4,600 years ago, Cheops hinted to his scandalized courtiers that he, unlike his predecessors, might not build a pyramid. It is the opening irony in Ismail Kadare's mordant political parable (Cheops' Great Pyramid is 480 feet high and covers 12 acres). Only the opening one, though. "The Pyramid" is an iron mille-feuille: multilayered, finely honed and lethal. Advance from Page 1 to Page 16, for example.

Each night, from 1,900 provincial offices throughout the empire, the dreams of its subjects are brought to the vast and labyrinthine Tabir Sarrail to be sorted and interpreted. The ultimate in intelligence agencies, it anatomizes the empire's subconscious for embryonic hints of discontent and disorder. Each week, the most portentously significant of the dreams is sent to the Sultan, to whose security the Sarrail is more important than the Army or the police.