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A Dictator Calls
'Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you. '
A fascinating exploration of the relationship between writers and tyranny, from the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize.
In June 1934, Joseph Stalin allegedly telephoned the famous novelist and poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of fellow Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam. In a fascinating combination of dreams and dossier facts, Ismail Kadare reconstructs the three minutes they spoke and the aftershocks of this tense, mysterious moment in modern history.
Weaving together the accounts of witnesses, reporters and writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, Kadare tells a gripping story of power and political structures, of the relationship between writers and tyranny. The telling brings to light uncanny parallels with Kadare's experience writing under dictatorship, when he received an unexpected phone call of his own.
Translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson
'Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness. ' Los Angeles Times
A fascinating exploration of the relationship between writers and tyranny, from the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize.
In June 1934, Joseph Stalin allegedly telephoned the famous novelist and poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of fellow Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam. In a fascinating combination of dreams and dossier facts, Ismail Kadare reconstructs the three minutes they spoke and the aftershocks of this tense, mysterious moment in modern history.
Weaving together the accounts of witnesses, reporters and writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, Kadare tells a gripping story of power and political structures, of the relationship between writers and tyranny. The telling brings to light uncanny parallels with Kadare's experience writing under dictatorship, when he received an unexpected phone call of his own.
Translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson
'Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness. ' Los Angeles Times
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 31, 2023
84 people are currently reading
4751 people want to read
About the author
Ismail Kadare
306books1,676followersIsmail Kadare (also spelled Kadaré) was an Albanian novelist and poet. He has been a leading literary figure in Albania since the 1960s. He focused on short stories until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army. In 1996 he became a lifetime member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of France. In 1992, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; in 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, in 2009 the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts, and in 2015 the Jerusalem Prize. He has divided his time between Albania and France since 1990. Kadare has been mentioned as a possible recipient for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. His works have been published in about 30 languages.
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokastër, in the south of Albania. His education included studies at the University of Tirana and then the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow, a training school for writers and critics.
In 1960 Kadare returned to Albania after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union, and he became a journalist and published his first poems.
His first novel, The General of the Dead Army, sprang from a short story, and its success established his name in Albania and enabled Kadare to become a full-time writer.
Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They are obliquely ironic as a result of trying to withstand political scrutiny. Among his best known books are Chronicle in Stone (1977), Broken April (1978), and The Concert (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.
In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokastër, in the south of Albania. His education included studies at the University of Tirana and then the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow, a training school for writers and critics.
In 1960 Kadare returned to Albania after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union, and he became a journalist and published his first poems.
His first novel, The General of the Dead Army, sprang from a short story, and its success established his name in Albania and enabled Kadare to become a full-time writer.
Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They are obliquely ironic as a result of trying to withstand political scrutiny. Among his best known books are Chronicle in Stone (1977), Broken April (1978), and The Concert (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.
In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 179 reviews
March 25, 2024
Then what was the phone call about? What was the reason for it? Was it really about some verses?
This is ambitious and intellectually challenging, rich and dense for such a short book, but the scant page numbers belie the contents. Kadare takes the brief phone call that Stalin made to Boris Pasternak after the arrest of Osip Mandelstam in 1934 and spins an obsessive and substantial if compressed meditation about poetry and politics, about the power of the artist and the authority of a dictator - both strong and vulnerable, albeit in different ways. I won't pretend that I understood all the references, especially to ideology as applicable to Soviet Russia and Albania, but I wish I did. A little more accessibility is something I would be grateful for though perhaps that's my responsibility as a reader rather than Kadare's as a writer.
At the heart of the text are thirteen versions of the phone call from the official archival transcript to records from involved sources such as , Olga Ivinskaya and . Kadare pores relentlessly over these, using them as a launch-pad to think about issues around history, 'truth', words and suppression.
I've seen comments about the mentions of the Nobel prize in the book with suggestions that Kadare uses them bitterly to shame the committee, but for me they were more about drawing another parallel between Pasternak and himself. And I think this is what I came away with most strongly: that this isn't a cool intellectual investigation into something that happened ninety years ago but is instead a way to access and articulate thoughts, ideas and anxieties about literature, writing within ideological and politicised constraints and artistic freedoms that are personal, deeply contemporary and troubling.
I wish that I had more of the political resources to do fuller justice to this book: I feel like an inadequate reader, but I can still feel the visceral passion in the text.
March 12, 2024
A Dictator Calls is not so much a novel as it is an historical inquiry. Mixing his personal recollections and reflections on the nature of oppression, Kadare inquiries into a short but significant episode in 20th century Russian history: the phone call between Stalin and Boris Pasternak.
In June 1934, shortly after the prison of poet Osip Mandelstam, Pasternak received a strange phone call. It was Stalin, asking what he thought of Mandelstam’s imprisonment. These are the basic facts. That 3-minute conversation and what happened afterwards is up for grabs. The prevalent version hints at Pasternak’s cowardice. Upon being asked (by, you know, Stalin) what he thought of Mandelstam, Pasternak answered that he and Mandelstam were very different poets. Stalin appears to have been disappointed and said, scornfully, “I expected you to stand up for your comrade better� or something to that effect. There are, as I said, several versions of the conversation, but most end up with Pasternak fumbling his way into a noncommittal answer and Stalin’s scorn. Other more benevolent versions show Pasternak defending Mandelstam or trying to phone Stalin back to explain himself better.
Why is Kadare so obsessed with this phone call? This event touches upon many of the topics that Kadare has written about: what oppressive states do to their societies and what they do to their citizens. How a totalitarian state forces people to change behaviours and values, how it forces otherwise upright individuals to behave cowardly in order to survive.
But there are other dynamics at play: why did Stalin phone Pasternak in the first place? Why did Stalin seem disappointed in him? The implication is that Stalin wanted Mandelstam to be saved and was hoping Pasternak would stand up for his friend. This, Kadare argues, is common currency in dictatorships. The leader can appear soft and blameless by leaving the dirty work for his minions. Mandelstam's imprisonment was not really Stalin’s fault; it was on his faithless friend who didn’t to defend him. Yet why Pasternak? This is where the story (and the history) gets interesting. Kadare implies there's something more profound linking these two men. Pasternak was never arrested; they arrested his lover instead. Pasternak was the Tolstoy to Stalin’s Tsar, a man who became by dint of his fame and talent bigger than the dictator, who recognized it and was perhaps fearful or jealous of him (or both). We also know that years later, during the purges, Pasternak refused to sign a statement supporting the execution of several writers. On the verge of being arrested, he appealed to Stalin, who granted him this grace by telling his police (according to one version) “leave that holy fool alone�.
This is an interesting book because the subject is fascinating and Kadare is a serious thinker, but I was hoping for a more profound conclusion and for more to be made of the situation that Kadare painstakingly re-constructed for us. He almost achieves this with the comparison between Tolstoy and Alexander III, but it falls flat in the end. This is not the easiest Kadare to start with (I recommend General of the Dead Army). Still, it is a book where Kadare muses on one of the greatest Russian writers and for this it should be read.
In June 1934, shortly after the prison of poet Osip Mandelstam, Pasternak received a strange phone call. It was Stalin, asking what he thought of Mandelstam’s imprisonment. These are the basic facts. That 3-minute conversation and what happened afterwards is up for grabs. The prevalent version hints at Pasternak’s cowardice. Upon being asked (by, you know, Stalin) what he thought of Mandelstam, Pasternak answered that he and Mandelstam were very different poets. Stalin appears to have been disappointed and said, scornfully, “I expected you to stand up for your comrade better� or something to that effect. There are, as I said, several versions of the conversation, but most end up with Pasternak fumbling his way into a noncommittal answer and Stalin’s scorn. Other more benevolent versions show Pasternak defending Mandelstam or trying to phone Stalin back to explain himself better.
Why is Kadare so obsessed with this phone call? This event touches upon many of the topics that Kadare has written about: what oppressive states do to their societies and what they do to their citizens. How a totalitarian state forces people to change behaviours and values, how it forces otherwise upright individuals to behave cowardly in order to survive.
But there are other dynamics at play: why did Stalin phone Pasternak in the first place? Why did Stalin seem disappointed in him? The implication is that Stalin wanted Mandelstam to be saved and was hoping Pasternak would stand up for his friend. This, Kadare argues, is common currency in dictatorships. The leader can appear soft and blameless by leaving the dirty work for his minions. Mandelstam's imprisonment was not really Stalin’s fault; it was on his faithless friend who didn’t to defend him. Yet why Pasternak? This is where the story (and the history) gets interesting. Kadare implies there's something more profound linking these two men. Pasternak was never arrested; they arrested his lover instead. Pasternak was the Tolstoy to Stalin’s Tsar, a man who became by dint of his fame and talent bigger than the dictator, who recognized it and was perhaps fearful or jealous of him (or both). We also know that years later, during the purges, Pasternak refused to sign a statement supporting the execution of several writers. On the verge of being arrested, he appealed to Stalin, who granted him this grace by telling his police (according to one version) “leave that holy fool alone�.
This is an interesting book because the subject is fascinating and Kadare is a serious thinker, but I was hoping for a more profound conclusion and for more to be made of the situation that Kadare painstakingly re-constructed for us. He almost achieves this with the comparison between Tolstoy and Alexander III, but it falls flat in the end. This is not the easiest Kadare to start with (I recommend General of the Dead Army). Still, it is a book where Kadare muses on one of the greatest Russian writers and for this it should be read.
February 3, 2023
O carte cu totul specială, mai degrabă eseu cu tentă polițistă decât roman, ne oferă printre altele o adevărată lecție de literatură sovietică.
Cartea se concentrează pe convorbirea dintre Stalin și Pasternak care a avut loc pe 23 iunie 1934 și misterul din jurul ei, care au fost cuvintele pe care cei doi le-au schimbat. Sunt 13 versiuni diferite, pe toate Kadare le analizează metodic, atat cuvintele existente cat si cele inexistente.
A pune față în față tiranul și artistul, confruntarea dintre ei este firul narativ pe care se concentrează cartea.
Exemplele sunt multe : Țarul Romanov față în față cu Puskin, Lenin cu Gorki , Stalin cu Pasternak, apoi chiar relatia dintre autor, Ismail Kadare și Enver Hodja.
Cartea se concentrează pe convorbirea dintre Stalin și Pasternak care a avut loc pe 23 iunie 1934 și misterul din jurul ei, care au fost cuvintele pe care cei doi le-au schimbat. Sunt 13 versiuni diferite, pe toate Kadare le analizează metodic, atat cuvintele existente cat si cele inexistente.
A pune față în față tiranul și artistul, confruntarea dintre ei este firul narativ pe care se concentrează cartea.
Exemplele sunt multe : Țarul Romanov față în față cu Puskin, Lenin cu Gorki , Stalin cu Pasternak, apoi chiar relatia dintre autor, Ismail Kadare și Enver Hodja.
March 24, 2024
34th book of 2024.
2.5. It seems unfair to call a 250 page novel about a 3 minute telephone conversation overly long. In 1934, Joseph Stalin rang Boris Pasternak. The conversation was somewhere between 3 and 4 minutes long. The subject of the conversation was the recently arrested poet, Mandelstam. Pasternak, many accounts suggest (though not all) was flustered by hearing the dictator on the other end of the line. His reply (varying responses and guesses have been made, but the general consensus is Pasternak dismisses the conversation because he and Mandelstam were never truly friends/he did not think much of him as a poet/he really wanted to talk to Stalin about life and about death) dissatisfied Stalin and he rang off. (‘We old Bolsheviks never turned our backs on our friends.�)
Kadare takes this hazy but fascinating instance in history and makes this strange speculative novel about it. Most of it is recounting 13 possible courses of conversation and exploring them. It’s repetitive. Would it be better, at this point, for the sake of fiction, to invent something, or to be true to the ambiguity of the conversation? Frankly, I consider it to be a brilliant novel subject, but partially wasted in Kadare’s hands. Imagine telling someone, “I am writing a novel about the 3 minute telephone conversation between Joseph Stalin and Boris Pasternak. No one truly knows what they said to each other; but it happened.�
I saw this months ago when it first came into work, and thought, I’d like to read that. With everything else piling up around me, it was just another book in just another pile for the future. When it landed on the Booker International longlist the other day, I bumped it up a few. I still quite like the MBI, mostly because I favour reading translated fiction, but I won’t be taking much notice of the regular Booker this year (other than the blurbs that particularly interest me).
One final thing: I did some reading about Kadare himself and it seems this book is shot through with Nobel bitterness. The narrator of this book seems to think he's been snubbed for years, and the narrator seems to be Kadare himself. (Apparently he has actually been nominated 15 times, but never won.) Then I read that Kadare and his wife were filmed during last year's announcements where his wife bitterly claimed that they've "never heard" of Annie Ernaux, despite living in France. Most viewers said it was unlikely - they're just bitter.
2.5. It seems unfair to call a 250 page novel about a 3 minute telephone conversation overly long. In 1934, Joseph Stalin rang Boris Pasternak. The conversation was somewhere between 3 and 4 minutes long. The subject of the conversation was the recently arrested poet, Mandelstam. Pasternak, many accounts suggest (though not all) was flustered by hearing the dictator on the other end of the line. His reply (varying responses and guesses have been made, but the general consensus is Pasternak dismisses the conversation because he and Mandelstam were never truly friends/he did not think much of him as a poet/he really wanted to talk to Stalin about life and about death) dissatisfied Stalin and he rang off. (‘We old Bolsheviks never turned our backs on our friends.�)
Kadare takes this hazy but fascinating instance in history and makes this strange speculative novel about it. Most of it is recounting 13 possible courses of conversation and exploring them. It’s repetitive. Would it be better, at this point, for the sake of fiction, to invent something, or to be true to the ambiguity of the conversation? Frankly, I consider it to be a brilliant novel subject, but partially wasted in Kadare’s hands. Imagine telling someone, “I am writing a novel about the 3 minute telephone conversation between Joseph Stalin and Boris Pasternak. No one truly knows what they said to each other; but it happened.�
I saw this months ago when it first came into work, and thought, I’d like to read that. With everything else piling up around me, it was just another book in just another pile for the future. When it landed on the Booker International longlist the other day, I bumped it up a few. I still quite like the MBI, mostly because I favour reading translated fiction, but I won’t be taking much notice of the regular Booker this year (other than the blurbs that particularly interest me).
One final thing: I did some reading about Kadare himself and it seems this book is shot through with Nobel bitterness. The narrator of this book seems to think he's been snubbed for years, and the narrator seems to be Kadare himself. (Apparently he has actually been nominated 15 times, but never won.) Then I read that Kadare and his wife were filmed during last year's announcements where his wife bitterly claimed that they've "never heard" of Annie Ernaux, despite living in France. Most viewers said it was unlikely - they're just bitter.
May 28, 2024
An odd little novel, but one dense in meanings most of which I am sure I have missed or not understood. The novel deals in part with the time the author spent at Moscow's Gorky institute at the time Pasternak was forced to reject the Nobel award and how the split between Albania's dictator Hoxha and the Soviet Union's Khrushchev over de-stalinization led to his exile from Moscow (territory covered in his previous novel 'The Death of the Eastern Gods') but deals also with a phone call between Pasternak and Stalin about Osip Mandelstam of which there are at least 13 different version that Kadare dissects.
But I think the novel is more an exegesis on the role of the writer in dictatorial society (there are also references to Pushkin and emperor Nicholas I and Tolstoy and Nicholas II and ultimately Kadare's role? responsibility? guilt? as the favoured literary star of Hoxha's Albania. I think Kadare may be exorcising his own ghosts (he recounts his own first telephone conversation with Hoxha) and feelings of culpability? I am not sure. Nor would I dare to stand in any form of judgement over Kadare, never mind Pasternak, for 'failings' in situations I have never faced, even though I don't really believe in him I still believe in 'There but for the grace of god go I'.
But I may be entirely wrong - this novel is richly complicated in the meaning of its language and reading it in English I can't help wondering how much I miss - there is a whole part that involves what Kadare said in his mediocre Russian to a colleague speaks to him at times in 18th century and then 16th century Albanian. Without criticising the translator (on what basis can I!) it is hard not to think that subtleties are being lost. This is particularly true when Kadare discusses translation Pushkin 'Monument' in which in the first line
"I raised a monument to myself
not made by hand."
is, he thinks clumsy because the word 'nyerukotvorniy' meaning not made by hand is untranslatable but Kadare fails to explain that it is the Russian word for the Greek orthodox idea of Acheiropoieta icons not made by human hands but which are miraculously created. The problem of why this meaning is ignored is complicated because it is part of conversation in Moscow in 1961 when religious subtleties of orthodox religious thought were possibly unknown to Kadare as someone from a Muslim heritage and in it might be that the religious dimensions of Pushkin's allegories weren't discussed. But it is odd that when reporting the conversation in the present he doesn't explain things, or maybe he doesn't think they need to be explained.
All of the above may mean nothing, maybe it is just a novel about a phone call Stalin made to Pasternak, but I don't think so. The dissection of the 13 versions of the phone call are, for me, the least engaging part of the work. To me the elliptical look at writers and rulers and where the power lies is the most interesting part - particularly the sidelight on Gorky and Lenin and then Stalin and how that may or may not throw light on Mandelstam and Stalin.
It is a book of many levels but is ultimately too opaque for my taste.
But I think the novel is more an exegesis on the role of the writer in dictatorial society (there are also references to Pushkin and emperor Nicholas I and Tolstoy and Nicholas II and ultimately Kadare's role? responsibility? guilt? as the favoured literary star of Hoxha's Albania. I think Kadare may be exorcising his own ghosts (he recounts his own first telephone conversation with Hoxha) and feelings of culpability? I am not sure. Nor would I dare to stand in any form of judgement over Kadare, never mind Pasternak, for 'failings' in situations I have never faced, even though I don't really believe in him I still believe in 'There but for the grace of god go I'.
But I may be entirely wrong - this novel is richly complicated in the meaning of its language and reading it in English I can't help wondering how much I miss - there is a whole part that involves what Kadare said in his mediocre Russian to a colleague speaks to him at times in 18th century and then 16th century Albanian. Without criticising the translator (on what basis can I!) it is hard not to think that subtleties are being lost. This is particularly true when Kadare discusses translation Pushkin 'Monument' in which in the first line
"I raised a monument to myself
not made by hand."
is, he thinks clumsy because the word 'nyerukotvorniy' meaning not made by hand is untranslatable but Kadare fails to explain that it is the Russian word for the Greek orthodox idea of Acheiropoieta icons not made by human hands but which are miraculously created. The problem of why this meaning is ignored is complicated because it is part of conversation in Moscow in 1961 when religious subtleties of orthodox religious thought were possibly unknown to Kadare as someone from a Muslim heritage and in it might be that the religious dimensions of Pushkin's allegories weren't discussed. But it is odd that when reporting the conversation in the present he doesn't explain things, or maybe he doesn't think they need to be explained.
All of the above may mean nothing, maybe it is just a novel about a phone call Stalin made to Pasternak, but I don't think so. The dissection of the 13 versions of the phone call are, for me, the least engaging part of the work. To me the elliptical look at writers and rulers and where the power lies is the most interesting part - particularly the sidelight on Gorky and Lenin and then Stalin and how that may or may not throw light on Mandelstam and Stalin.
It is a book of many levels but is ultimately too opaque for my taste.
May 1, 2022
1934. Poetul evreu Osip Mandelștam este arestat la Moscova. Imediat după, are loc o convorbire telefonică inedită de doar câteva minute între Stalin și scriitorul Boris Pasternak, prima și ultima convorbire între ei. Stalin îl apelează și îl întreabă ce părere are despre Mandelștam, despre opera sa și despre arestarea ce tocmai a survenit, iar apoi îl critică/îl dojenează pe Pasternak că nu i-a luat apărarea poetului.
Kadare a auzit de această celebră convorbire pe când era student la Moscova, iar acum încearcă să găsească un adevăr cât mai clar despre ce s-a discutat atunci la telefon, punând în pagină și analizând cele 13 versiuni diferite ale poveștii, rememorate de martori sau de prietenii/cunoștințele martorilor. Un altfel de Kadare, care discută aici și despre dictatură, și despre caznele literaților din perioada sovietică, și despre confruntarea continuă între criminal și scriitor.
Kadare a auzit de această celebră convorbire pe când era student la Moscova, iar acum încearcă să găsească un adevăr cât mai clar despre ce s-a discutat atunci la telefon, punând în pagină și analizând cele 13 versiuni diferite ale poveștii, rememorate de martori sau de prietenii/cunoștințele martorilor. Un altfel de Kadare, care discută aici și despre dictatură, și despre caznele literaților din perioada sovietică, și despre confruntarea continuă între criminal și scriitor.
November 2, 2024
Longlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize one where I'd commend the judges for featuring an ambitious and complex novel, albeit one that falls well short in its execution.
Most of the students, as they howled in chorus to denounce the prize, dreamed of nothing else but winning it. However, the question wasn’t about them, but about myself. Should I say that the Nobel Prize had never crossed my mind? Of course not. I’d thought of it often, but especially years later when it was whispered that I myself. . . might beonthatlist.
A Dictator Calls is John Hodgson's translation of the snappily titled original 'Kur sunduesit grinden. Rreth misterit të telefonimit Stalin-Pasternak' from 2018 by Ismail Kadare (literal translation - When rulers quarrel. About the mystery of the Stalin-Pasternak phone call).
Kadare was winner of the Booker International Prize in 2005, but before its reverse take-over by the longer standing Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and when it treated international as non-Commonwealth, and was a life's works prize not a book prize.
And indeed Kadare has been awarded many of international literature's most important life's works prizes - the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1992), the aforementioned Man Booker International Prize (2005), Prince of Asturias Award (2009), Jerusalem Prize (2015), Park Kyong-ni Prize (2019) and the Neustadt International Prize forLiterature (2020).
Which leaves really only one big prize missing - the biggest of them all, the Nobel.
Per the of Alex Shephard's witty and very perceptive annual take on the Nobel Prize runners-and-riders, the late Philip Roth had an annual ritual of "(reportedly) going to his agent’s office on the day of the announcement to await a call that never comes", and he imagines similar for perennial bookies favourite Haruki Murakami:
And of course that "some Swedish words—Jon Fosse—some more Swedish words" is what I was delighted to hear in 2023.
From A Dictator Calls, it appears Ismail Kadare may have similarly been expecting a phone call from a Stockholm dialling code on the first Thursday in October each year for some decades (although after , it's wise not to get too excited until such a call has been verified.)
Shepherd also had Kadare featured in his 2022 list of "What if the Nobel Prize Only Goes to Europeans From Now On?" contenders, noting his 33-1 odds and describing him cruelly but accurately as a "less important Albanian cultural export than Dua Lipa." He is also referred to as having been nominated 15 times, including by the , which is interesting .
Indeed in that same year of 2022, watched Kadare's reaction to the announcement live - not at his agent's office but in a bar - Kadare himself was reported to have commented "I have no thoughts. 40 years ago, I might have but not today" and his wife, rather ungraciously claimed not to have heard of Annie Ernaux (really??) - “We don’t know the writer who won the Nobel, even though we live in France. I’ve never heard her, to be sure, but I haven’t even heard her name before. As long as the Nobel jury is the same and has been saying no [to Kadare] for 40 years, you don’t have to change your opinion about them.�
So A Dictator Calls primarily serves as a reminder to the Nobel Committee that they may want to rectify the omission in 2024, but it also allows Kadare to revisit a long-standing fascination with Boris Pasternak, and two of his signature themes, the nature of power and the fate of art in a dictatorship.
The first section of the novel set up of the links between Boris Pasternak and the narrator (/author), referring in particular to Pasternak being forced to refuse the Nobel Prize he was awarded in 1958 (although the Prize was awarded anyway as the Nobel Foundation doesn’t acknowledge refusals), an incident which took place when the narrator, like Kadare himself, was a student in Moscow.
It also covers the narrator/Kadare’s later fictionalisation of the event in his novel (tr. David Bellos) - although I was confused that this is referred to as the third in a trilogy of novels with The Three Arched Bridge and The Traitor's Niche (both tr. John Hodgson), whereas I'd taken the third part of that trilogy to be The Palace of Dreams (tr. Barbara Bray), the three all set in Albania under the Ottoman Empire.
Kadare attributes Pasternak’s death 2 years later, from lung cancer, to the Nobel Prize situation and as per the quote which opens my review seems to see an affiliation due to his own candidature for the Prize.
I was not involved in this story by chance, but more mixed up in it than anyone else. It was beyond the question of Family. There was a bond of terror between us. There in Peredelkino, on the ground floor of his dacha, lying on his narrow camp bed, Boris Pasternak was dying, killed by the Nobel Prize. In more than half a century since the prize was first given, the Russian poet was the first person it had killed. He would be mourned by his wife Zinaida Nikolayevna, and by his children, by strangers, and by his lover. It was May, I was still in Moscow, and I dimly sensed my future mysterious connectionwithhim.
The second section then sets up the rest of the book by turning to another key event in Pasternak’s life - a famous phone call from Stalin himself in 1934, the dictator wanting to discuss Pasternak’s views on the poet Osip Mandelstam.
The third section - which moves from fiction into essay - then presents and analyses 13 different accounts of this conversation, in the same elliptical style (is Kadare trying to recreate the way he and other authors had to write under Communist censorship?). This is reminscent of the novel-without-fiction as per Javier Cercas's (tr. Anne McLean), where the novelistic element comes from the author's inability to answer the central question:
Here the blind spot what Stalin and Pasternak discussed, and why Stalin made the call. However, I couldn't help but feel Cercas does this rather better - e.g. in his (tr. Anne McLean) - whereas Kadare's 'formulation in the most complex way possible' can descend into circuitous rambling.
A novel that I admired in its conception more than its execution - 2.5 stars rounded down for the blatant Nobel pitch.
Most of the students, as they howled in chorus to denounce the prize, dreamed of nothing else but winning it. However, the question wasn’t about them, but about myself. Should I say that the Nobel Prize had never crossed my mind? Of course not. I’d thought of it often, but especially years later when it was whispered that I myself. . . might beonthatlist.
A Dictator Calls is John Hodgson's translation of the snappily titled original 'Kur sunduesit grinden. Rreth misterit të telefonimit Stalin-Pasternak' from 2018 by Ismail Kadare (literal translation - When rulers quarrel. About the mystery of the Stalin-Pasternak phone call).
Kadare was winner of the Booker International Prize in 2005, but before its reverse take-over by the longer standing Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and when it treated international as non-Commonwealth, and was a life's works prize not a book prize.
And indeed Kadare has been awarded many of international literature's most important life's works prizes - the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1992), the aforementioned Man Booker International Prize (2005), Prince of Asturias Award (2009), Jerusalem Prize (2015), Park Kyong-ni Prize (2019) and the Neustadt International Prize forLiterature (2020).
Which leaves really only one big prize missing - the biggest of them all, the Nobel.
Per the of Alex Shephard's witty and very perceptive annual take on the Nobel Prize runners-and-riders, the late Philip Roth had an annual ritual of "(reportedly) going to his agent’s office on the day of the announcement to await a call that never comes", and he imagines similar for perennial bookies favourite Haruki Murakami:
I have no idea if Murakami wants the Nobel Prize or if he expects it—and he shouldn’t, because he is not going to win—but I have decided to now picture Murakami doing exactly this. He laces up his running shoes. He puts on a Stan Getz record on the most expensive, minimalist stereo system you have ever seen. Pasta boils on the stove in a gleaming, spotless pot. Murakami sits by the phone in an Eames chair, and he loads YouTube and watches the announcement muted, with subtitles: some Swedish words—Jon Fosse—some more Swedish words. He steps outside and runs 22 miles without stopping.
And of course that "some Swedish words—Jon Fosse—some more Swedish words" is what I was delighted to hear in 2023.
From A Dictator Calls, it appears Ismail Kadare may have similarly been expecting a phone call from a Stockholm dialling code on the first Thursday in October each year for some decades (although after , it's wise not to get too excited until such a call has been verified.)
Shepherd also had Kadare featured in his 2022 list of "What if the Nobel Prize Only Goes to Europeans From Now On?" contenders, noting his 33-1 odds and describing him cruelly but accurately as a "less important Albanian cultural export than Dua Lipa." He is also referred to as having been nominated 15 times, including by the , which is interesting .
Indeed in that same year of 2022, watched Kadare's reaction to the announcement live - not at his agent's office but in a bar - Kadare himself was reported to have commented "I have no thoughts. 40 years ago, I might have but not today" and his wife, rather ungraciously claimed not to have heard of Annie Ernaux (really??) - “We don’t know the writer who won the Nobel, even though we live in France. I’ve never heard her, to be sure, but I haven’t even heard her name before. As long as the Nobel jury is the same and has been saying no [to Kadare] for 40 years, you don’t have to change your opinion about them.�
So A Dictator Calls primarily serves as a reminder to the Nobel Committee that they may want to rectify the omission in 2024, but it also allows Kadare to revisit a long-standing fascination with Boris Pasternak, and two of his signature themes, the nature of power and the fate of art in a dictatorship.
The first section of the novel set up of the links between Boris Pasternak and the narrator (/author), referring in particular to Pasternak being forced to refuse the Nobel Prize he was awarded in 1958 (although the Prize was awarded anyway as the Nobel Foundation doesn’t acknowledge refusals), an incident which took place when the narrator, like Kadare himself, was a student in Moscow.
It also covers the narrator/Kadare’s later fictionalisation of the event in his novel (tr. David Bellos) - although I was confused that this is referred to as the third in a trilogy of novels with The Three Arched Bridge and The Traitor's Niche (both tr. John Hodgson), whereas I'd taken the third part of that trilogy to be The Palace of Dreams (tr. Barbara Bray), the three all set in Albania under the Ottoman Empire.
Kadare attributes Pasternak’s death 2 years later, from lung cancer, to the Nobel Prize situation and as per the quote which opens my review seems to see an affiliation due to his own candidature for the Prize.
I was not involved in this story by chance, but more mixed up in it than anyone else. It was beyond the question of Family. There was a bond of terror between us. There in Peredelkino, on the ground floor of his dacha, lying on his narrow camp bed, Boris Pasternak was dying, killed by the Nobel Prize. In more than half a century since the prize was first given, the Russian poet was the first person it had killed. He would be mourned by his wife Zinaida Nikolayevna, and by his children, by strangers, and by his lover. It was May, I was still in Moscow, and I dimly sensed my future mysterious connectionwithhim.
The second section then sets up the rest of the book by turning to another key event in Pasternak’s life - a famous phone call from Stalin himself in 1934, the dictator wanting to discuss Pasternak’s views on the poet Osip Mandelstam.
The third section - which moves from fiction into essay - then presents and analyses 13 different accounts of this conversation, in the same elliptical style (is Kadare trying to recreate the way he and other authors had to write under Communist censorship?). This is reminscent of the novel-without-fiction as per Javier Cercas's (tr. Anne McLean), where the novelistic element comes from the author's inability to answer the central question:
The novel is not the genre of answers, but that of questions: writing a novel consists of posing a complex question in order to formulate it in the most complex way possible, not to answer it, or not to answer it in a clear and unequivocal way; it consists of immersing oneself in an enigma to render it insoluble, not to decipher it
Here the blind spot what Stalin and Pasternak discussed, and why Stalin made the call. However, I couldn't help but feel Cercas does this rather better - e.g. in his (tr. Anne McLean) - whereas Kadare's 'formulation in the most complex way possible' can descend into circuitous rambling.
A novel that I admired in its conception more than its execution - 2.5 stars rounded down for the blatant Nobel pitch.
March 12, 2024
Whatever this crap is, it's mercifully short (but I still couldn't finish it). I mean, I could write a longer piece - about how Kadare mentions at least five times that there are rumors about him being a Nobel candidate, about how he deliberately distorts Marx, about how he refuses to acknowledge the existence of the Russian avant-garde - but I don't want to spend my time on petit-bourgeoisie at its ugliest.
April 19, 2024
Ismail Kadare is one of those writers who I just don’t like. I’ve always thought his plots were interesting but his writing style does not gel with me. I find it laborious.
While researching, Kadare discovers that in 1934 Josef Stalin called Boris Pasternak for three minutes in order to enquire about an arrested poet. Kadare then takes this call and views it from 11 different perspectives, with a 12th being an epilogue. In the process Kadare discovers the link between politics and literature or how literature is a form of protest.
I didn’t like the book. I found it dull and a slog for such a short novel. Even the message didn’t impress. I know one can’t like every book on a longlist and this is the one.
While researching, Kadare discovers that in 1934 Josef Stalin called Boris Pasternak for three minutes in order to enquire about an arrested poet. Kadare then takes this call and views it from 11 different perspectives, with a 12th being an epilogue. In the process Kadare discovers the link between politics and literature or how literature is a form of protest.
I didn’t like the book. I found it dull and a slog for such a short novel. Even the message didn’t impress. I know one can’t like every book on a longlist and this is the one.
April 28, 2024
Another International Booker longlistee I just don't know what to do with. It had intriguing ideas in it, but felt SO random and honestly just not that interesting overall to me. Thankfully it can be read in about 2 hours or less so it was not a complete waste of time. I just didn't quite get it.
November 29, 2023
he cooked a little bit but mostly gave me a headache.
September 30, 2023
Un text frumos, dar oare ce l-a apucat pe Kadare să-l scrie? Subiectul e o conversație telefonică între Stalin și Pasternak. Cel din urmă are oportunitatea (oare?) să-l salveze pe prietenul său Mandelștam dar se bâlbâie, îl apucă lașitatea, în fine - nu o face. Textul lui Kadare e scris la Paris în 2018, de aici și curiozitatea. Protagoniștii - morți și îngropați, deși textele poeților îs cât se poate de vii.
Poate fi un text personal? Un compromis care-l ține treaz la Paris, noaptea, peste 30 de ani după căderea Cortinei de fier? Ca să supraviețuiască sau ca să fie publicat în Albania stalinistă? Nu e clar. Poate de asta textului îi lipsește emoția, iar întrebarea de ce l-a scris rămâne a fi una retorică.
Poate fi un text personal? Un compromis care-l ține treaz la Paris, noaptea, peste 30 de ani după căderea Cortinei de fier? Ca să supraviețuiască sau ca să fie publicat în Albania stalinistă? Nu e clar. Poate de asta textului îi lipsește emoția, iar întrebarea de ce l-a scris rămâne a fi una retorică.
April 10, 2024
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024.
In April 1934, Russian poet recited his Stalin Epigram to his fellow poet . The Epigram, also known as The Kremlin Highlander, describes the climate of fear in the Soviet Union, which was only read by Mandelstam to a select few of his friends, among those are Boris Pasternak and . Based on his wife ’s 1971 memoir (translated by Max Hayward), the Epigram goes as follows.
In the Epigram, some metaphors clearly signify Stalin as its subject, such as the allusion to the “Kremlin Caucasian� which refers to Stalin’s Georgian origin as well as the phrase “Ossetian torso� in the final line which refers to Stalin’s ethnicity, whose paternal grandfather was possibly an ethnic Ossetian.
Following Mandelstam’s recitation, Pasternak was reported to say the following to him:
In May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested at his home. Devastated by the news, Pasternak went immediately to the office of news agency Izvestia and made an appeal to Nikolai Bukharin, the then editor of Izvestia who still yielded high influence, to intercede on Mandelstam’s behalf, as Bukharin had acted as Mandelstam’s political protector since 1922.
Soon after his meeting with Bukharin, the telephone rang in Pasternak’s apartment in Moscow. The given date was Saturday, 23 June 1934. A voice of someone calling from the Kremlin said, “Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you.� Following the introduction by his secretary, Stalin spoke to Pasternak in a conversation that lasted three minutes and four seconds. The conversation reportedly went as follows:
There the conversation ended abruptly. In a panic induced by the difficulties of understanding Stalin’s intention and the unbelievable conviction of the impossibility of the phone call having taken place, Pasternak made another attempt to reach Stalin to clarify his statement, which failed to manifest. Mandelstam remained under arrest and later spent the rest of his life in exile until his death in 1938.
Ismail Kadare narrates the story from the perspective of an Albanian writer. The year was in the 1970s. Enver Hoxha was still in power, and Albania despite its adherence to communist ideology, had moved away from the Soviet sphere of influence. The narrator simply wanted to write something about the phone call, establishing facts and making some attempts to reach the conclusion of what actually took place in the conversation in those three minutes. Personally, he had a sentiment towards Russia, and particularly Moscow, as he spent his time studying there before the political split from the Soviet bloc which made Albania the last Stalinist outpost in Europe. For him, he simply wanted to write a story that takes place in Moscow. Moscow is simply a canvas for his story.
What follows is something akin to what Czech playwright and former president describes in his 1978 political essay . In his essay, Havel describes the nature of communist regimes of the time with their totalitarian nature and argues that the nature of such regimes can create dissidents of ordinary citizens. Havel was initially a playwright before he turned into a statesman following the unfolding of the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that toppled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. He simply wanted to work on his art, yet the very nature of the communist regime made his art political. He suddenly found himself in confrontation with the authorities and was forced into compliance. He was arrested in May 1979 and remained imprisoned until February 1983.
Similarly, our narrator in this story also faced such a moral dilemma, of him being in confrontation with the authorities. He further insinuated that such cases are not unique to Albania, for the same thing had happened in 1934 with the arrest of Mandelstam and a subsequent phone call between Stalin and Pasternak which posited some possibilities of Pasternak requesting Stalin to release Mandelstam (which didn’t materialise). From then on, our narrator describes 13 versions of the conversation that transpired between Stalin and Pasternak, originating from various accounts of different people who had interacted with Pasternak (and of course, the official state’s record by the Soviet authorities).
Kadare is creative in his interpretation of the phone call and uses it as such as a canvas to describe the dilemma of being a poet (and by extension, anyone whose occupations are related to the work of art, as the Russians have an important soft spot for poetry) in a totalitarian society. I like the intertextuality of this story, with the narrator presenting 13 versions of the conversation, thereby providing readers with choices to accumulate knowledge and gain an understanding of the nature of tyrant-poet relations in a totalitarian society, as exemplified by Mandelstam’s arrest and subsequent Stalin-Pasternak phone call. The established truth remains ambivalent, particularly with the absence of testimonies by Stalin and Pasternak themselves, the conversants who had primary knowledge of what actually transpired during the phone call.
In April 1934, Russian poet recited his Stalin Epigram to his fellow poet . The Epigram, also known as The Kremlin Highlander, describes the climate of fear in the Soviet Union, which was only read by Mandelstam to a select few of his friends, among those are Boris Pasternak and . Based on his wife ’s 1971 memoir (translated by Max Hayward), the Epigram goes as follows.
We are living, but can’t feel the land where we stay,
More than ten steps away you can’t hear what we say.
But if people would talk on occasion,
They should mention the Kremlin Caucasian.
His thick fingers are bulky and fat like live-baits,
And his accurate words are as heavy as weights.
Cucaracha’s moustaches are screaming,
And his boot-tops are shining and gleaming.
But around him a crowd of thin-necked henchmen,
And he plays with the services of these half-men.
Some are whistling, some meowing, some sniffing,
He’s alone booming, poking and whiffing.
He is forging his rules and decrees like horseshoes �
Into groins, into foreheads, in eyes, and eyebrows.
Every killing for him is delight,
And Ossetian torso is wide.
In the Epigram, some metaphors clearly signify Stalin as its subject, such as the allusion to the “Kremlin Caucasian� which refers to Stalin’s Georgian origin as well as the phrase “Ossetian torso� in the final line which refers to Stalin’s ethnicity, whose paternal grandfather was possibly an ethnic Ossetian.
Following Mandelstam’s recitation, Pasternak was reported to say the following to him:
“I didn’t hear this, you didn’t recite it to me, because, you know, very strange and terrible things are happening now: they’ve begun to pick people up. I’m afraid the walls have ears and perhaps even these benches on the boulevard here may be able to listen and tell tales. So let’s make out that I heard nothing.�
In May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested at his home. Devastated by the news, Pasternak went immediately to the office of news agency Izvestia and made an appeal to Nikolai Bukharin, the then editor of Izvestia who still yielded high influence, to intercede on Mandelstam’s behalf, as Bukharin had acted as Mandelstam’s political protector since 1922.
Soon after his meeting with Bukharin, the telephone rang in Pasternak’s apartment in Moscow. The given date was Saturday, 23 June 1934. A voice of someone calling from the Kremlin said, “Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you.� Following the introduction by his secretary, Stalin spoke to Pasternak in a conversation that lasted three minutes and four seconds. The conversation reportedly went as follows:
Stalin: Tell me, what's the gossip in your literary circles about Mandelstam's arrest?
Pasternak: You know, there is no gossip, because to have gossip you have to have literary circles. But there are no literary circles because everyone is scared.
Stalin: All right, then tell me your personal opinion about Mandelstam. What do you think about this poet?
Pasternak: We’re different, Comrade Stalin.
Stalin: So you don't know how to stand up for your friend.
There the conversation ended abruptly. In a panic induced by the difficulties of understanding Stalin’s intention and the unbelievable conviction of the impossibility of the phone call having taken place, Pasternak made another attempt to reach Stalin to clarify his statement, which failed to manifest. Mandelstam remained under arrest and later spent the rest of his life in exile until his death in 1938.
Ismail Kadare narrates the story from the perspective of an Albanian writer. The year was in the 1970s. Enver Hoxha was still in power, and Albania despite its adherence to communist ideology, had moved away from the Soviet sphere of influence. The narrator simply wanted to write something about the phone call, establishing facts and making some attempts to reach the conclusion of what actually took place in the conversation in those three minutes. Personally, he had a sentiment towards Russia, and particularly Moscow, as he spent his time studying there before the political split from the Soviet bloc which made Albania the last Stalinist outpost in Europe. For him, he simply wanted to write a story that takes place in Moscow. Moscow is simply a canvas for his story.
What follows is something akin to what Czech playwright and former president describes in his 1978 political essay . In his essay, Havel describes the nature of communist regimes of the time with their totalitarian nature and argues that the nature of such regimes can create dissidents of ordinary citizens. Havel was initially a playwright before he turned into a statesman following the unfolding of the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that toppled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. He simply wanted to work on his art, yet the very nature of the communist regime made his art political. He suddenly found himself in confrontation with the authorities and was forced into compliance. He was arrested in May 1979 and remained imprisoned until February 1983.
Similarly, our narrator in this story also faced such a moral dilemma, of him being in confrontation with the authorities. He further insinuated that such cases are not unique to Albania, for the same thing had happened in 1934 with the arrest of Mandelstam and a subsequent phone call between Stalin and Pasternak which posited some possibilities of Pasternak requesting Stalin to release Mandelstam (which didn’t materialise). From then on, our narrator describes 13 versions of the conversation that transpired between Stalin and Pasternak, originating from various accounts of different people who had interacted with Pasternak (and of course, the official state’s record by the Soviet authorities).
Kadare is creative in his interpretation of the phone call and uses it as such as a canvas to describe the dilemma of being a poet (and by extension, anyone whose occupations are related to the work of art, as the Russians have an important soft spot for poetry) in a totalitarian society. I like the intertextuality of this story, with the narrator presenting 13 versions of the conversation, thereby providing readers with choices to accumulate knowledge and gain an understanding of the nature of tyrant-poet relations in a totalitarian society, as exemplified by Mandelstam’s arrest and subsequent Stalin-Pasternak phone call. The established truth remains ambivalent, particularly with the absence of testimonies by Stalin and Pasternak themselves, the conversants who had primary knowledge of what actually transpired during the phone call.
April 12, 2024
Much, much more than a study of the famous phone call Stalin made to Pasternak in 1934. It´s that,examining the various versions,but also a treatise on power, dictatorship, and the power of art. Extraordinary.
April 27, 2024
This book was exactly what it said it was going to be but somehow still not what I expected. In this short novel, the reader is presented with thirteen different versions of a phone call that took place in 1934 between the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the poet Boris Pasternak regarding Osip Mandelstam’s arrest. Kadare, however, not only recounts these versions but interweaves them with musings on the delicate relationship between dictators and artists, the power of and constraints on art/artists under such a political system, and his own (?) experience of living in Moscow as a student and writing under a communist regime in Albania. This was a thought-provoking read that raised a number of questions regarding not only these precarious relations but also the role of public perception and the importance of minutiae - how changing even the most minuscule of details can affect the eventual interpretation of a situation.
March 15, 2024
This is not a book I would have picked up on my own. And if I had, it’s not one I would have seen to completion. That’s not to say I didn’t gain anything by reading it…I learned a lot about 20th century Russian literary circles, but the focus of the novel is narrow and specific—a 3 minute phone call between Joseph Stalin and Boris Pasternak—and it’s the sort of thing I would have probably rather have just read a Wikipedia article about.
But, I did read it and I’m not sure I’d call it a novel. While the first two sections are more introspective and memoir-esque (I admit I found these parts a bit self-indulgent), the 13 rehashings of the phone call are more historical inquiry and speculation.
The gist of the phone call is made clear from the start, but the details vary slightly from version to version depending on the source, showing not only how fickle memory can be, but the acts of self preservation one must employ when living under a oppressive regime. Despite expounding on the discrepancies and speculating at their cause and meaning, by the end we’re left feeling no more confident in the details of this phone call than we were at the start.
Where Kadare captures my attention is in his exploration of the relationship between tyrants and artists and the power both parties hold.
Well written, but niche to a fault for this reader.
But, I did read it and I’m not sure I’d call it a novel. While the first two sections are more introspective and memoir-esque (I admit I found these parts a bit self-indulgent), the 13 rehashings of the phone call are more historical inquiry and speculation.
The gist of the phone call is made clear from the start, but the details vary slightly from version to version depending on the source, showing not only how fickle memory can be, but the acts of self preservation one must employ when living under a oppressive regime. Despite expounding on the discrepancies and speculating at their cause and meaning, by the end we’re left feeling no more confident in the details of this phone call than we were at the start.
Where Kadare captures my attention is in his exploration of the relationship between tyrants and artists and the power both parties hold.
Well written, but niche to a fault for this reader.
April 2, 2024
I actually� liked this? A Dictator Calls is about an alleged three-minute conversation between Josef Stalin and Boris Pasternak that everyone seems to remember differently. The book talk about and analyses thirteen different versions of the so called conversation and the importance of the differences in each of them.
My only question is where is the fiction here? The first chapter I guess, but it felt very real and more of like an authors introduction to his ‘essay� than anything else. I felt myself strangely sucked into the book and wanting to know more about each version of the conversation but am failing to spot where the fiction begins and the non-fiction analysis ends. I’d like to read more from the author which has a more fiction feel to it as I did really like the writing.
My only question is where is the fiction here? The first chapter I guess, but it felt very real and more of like an authors introduction to his ‘essay� than anything else. I felt myself strangely sucked into the book and wanting to know more about each version of the conversation but am failing to spot where the fiction begins and the non-fiction analysis ends. I’d like to read more from the author which has a more fiction feel to it as I did really like the writing.
May 15, 2024
3.5 stars
I was drawn to this book, longlisted for the International Booker, because of the intriguing premise: a whole book (novel? memoir? essay?) about a 3 minute telephone call between Stalin and a famous Russian poet.
There were some really interesting parts, particularly the exploration of how art is created, reviewed, and distributed under authoritarianism, the relationship between art and power, how historical events are recorded and remembered.
However, the premise that drew me in was also the book’s downfall - the last 3/5s of the book is thirteen accounts of the same short phone call, with the minor differences in its accounts being reviewed in painstaking detail. Ultimately, it was just too repetitive and dragging.
I was drawn to this book, longlisted for the International Booker, because of the intriguing premise: a whole book (novel? memoir? essay?) about a 3 minute telephone call between Stalin and a famous Russian poet.
There were some really interesting parts, particularly the exploration of how art is created, reviewed, and distributed under authoritarianism, the relationship between art and power, how historical events are recorded and remembered.
However, the premise that drew me in was also the book’s downfall - the last 3/5s of the book is thirteen accounts of the same short phone call, with the minor differences in its accounts being reviewed in painstaking detail. Ultimately, it was just too repetitive and dragging.
April 7, 2024
A Rashomon-style recounting of a (real) phone call between Stalin and the poet Pasternak, after the arrest of the poet Mandelstam. I loved it. A meditation on the nature of power, legacy .. the turbulent soviet 1930s and beyond. Also what a bonkers topic lmao - I'm sure part of my love for this book is because I kept cackling at the fact that it had been translated into English and would be read by westerners interested in the booker prize nominees - does this book make any sense to them? 😂
February 20, 2025
About 20 pages in, I set this book down and pivoted to Boris Pasternak's Wikipedia page. It was the only thing that got me through the rest of this book. It feels more like a personal meditation, an autofiction retracing of the author's time in Moscow some 60+ years ago, than a novel. I wanted to like it. Luckily, it's a short book; otherwise it would've been a DNF. Not quite sure how this got on the 2024 Int'l Booker Prize long list.
March 23, 2024
I very intriguing story about recording history and our interpretations. I love the premise; the entire book is hyper focused on the 4-minute phone call and 10+ possibilities of how to interpret the conversations. What didn’t work for me is the execution—I find the writing style a bit dry. It almost reads like nonfiction 😅
March 31, 2024
“𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯� 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦.�
On Saturday, June 23, 1934, Joseph Stalin called the famous poet, Boris Pasternak, to seek his opinion on the arrest of another poet, Mandelstam. The conversation between the two lasted for approximately three minutes. In his novel, Kadare presents thirteen different accounts of this conversation from various sources. He examines the reliability of each version while also exploring the connection between poets and tyrants.
The first part of the book follows the narrator as he tries to get his novel approved by the publisher during a time of censorship and dictatorship. I enjoyed reading this section of the story.
The second part of the book presents the thirteen different versions of the famous phone call. While it offers insight, I found it to be too many versions to read through, and I preferred the first half of the book.
As I read, I found myself Googling and learning new things, particularly about Russian poets and writers. Kadare raises many thought-provoking questions, including whose version of events can be trusted and how people can change and adapt their values to survive.
𝘈 𝘋𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴 is a well-written and informative novel that sheds light on the lives of writers living under dictatorship.
“𝘛𝘩� 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘩𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘦.�
On Saturday, June 23, 1934, Joseph Stalin called the famous poet, Boris Pasternak, to seek his opinion on the arrest of another poet, Mandelstam. The conversation between the two lasted for approximately three minutes. In his novel, Kadare presents thirteen different accounts of this conversation from various sources. He examines the reliability of each version while also exploring the connection between poets and tyrants.
The first part of the book follows the narrator as he tries to get his novel approved by the publisher during a time of censorship and dictatorship. I enjoyed reading this section of the story.
The second part of the book presents the thirteen different versions of the famous phone call. While it offers insight, I found it to be too many versions to read through, and I preferred the first half of the book.
As I read, I found myself Googling and learning new things, particularly about Russian poets and writers. Kadare raises many thought-provoking questions, including whose version of events can be trusted and how people can change and adapt their values to survive.
𝘈 𝘋𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴 is a well-written and informative novel that sheds light on the lives of writers living under dictatorship.
“𝘛𝘩� 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘩𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘦.�
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December 25, 2024uh
definitely a book?
definitely a book?
June 24, 2024
"The tyrant and the poet, however much they may seem opposites, both held power. The first associations of the word power can only be grim: oppression, violence, dispossession. Yet human language has also thought of gentler usages. Power can be used for bad ends, but an artistic genius has power, and so does a sweet fair-haired woman."
Imagine being a poet in Stalinist Russia in 1934 and the phone rings to hear the tyrant on the other end. This comes shortly after another poet's recent arrest for sharing a poem deemed inflammatory to the state. As one would imagine, you'd be in shock, concern and who knows what else in that jumble of the startling moment. At the time poets were like rock stars and held a certain power that the powers that be were keeping a more than close eye upon. What ensues is a Soviet version of an adult version of the game Telephone.
"Anybody who takes the plunge in search of the truth, who thinks at first that thirteen versions are too many, may by the end of the case think that these are insufficient."
How many versions of the truth existed and how many versions does it take to get to the truth? A Dictator Calls unfolds through a baker's dozen variety of reports from KGB agents, reporters, mistresses, and others all in hopes that the protagonist can find out what was spoken about in that 200 second phone call that June day in 1934.
"I had no reason to dramatize the affair or complain to anybody, and still less to call this novel an obligation or... a rite. It was fuelled by my own incessant urge, which some people call a gift and others a madness or a demon. The other was infinitely larger. But the suitable material came vaguely and in riddles, until one day, without analyzing it thoroughly, I grasped a hold of it."
The premise and subject matter of the book's blurb had me all giddy to get to this book by Kadare. There were moments of clarity and pure enjoyment and others where I couldn't wait to get through it. It was hit at parts and mostly a miss at others. There was no real hook other than the ongoing hope that it would be more appealing with some sort of twist and yet it never arrived. The subject matter is interesting however, this book left me feeling kinda meh.
"History is usually reticent regarding what happens between poets and tyrants. The truth gives way to inventions, some memorable, others forgettable."
"This exteriorisation implies a question of who is to blame, the individual or his times? It is of course easier to believe in the fault of an indi- vidual or individuals, not to say entire peoples, than the guilt of an entire age."
"And so, we who know something about this matter are obliged to bear witness to it, even those aspects that are impossible to confirm. Moment by moment, second by second ... Just as he and all our brothers-in-art bore witness to it, without anybody knowing and without tak- ing anyone's side. Because art, unlike a tyrant, receives no mercy, but only gives it."
Imagine being a poet in Stalinist Russia in 1934 and the phone rings to hear the tyrant on the other end. This comes shortly after another poet's recent arrest for sharing a poem deemed inflammatory to the state. As one would imagine, you'd be in shock, concern and who knows what else in that jumble of the startling moment. At the time poets were like rock stars and held a certain power that the powers that be were keeping a more than close eye upon. What ensues is a Soviet version of an adult version of the game Telephone.
"Anybody who takes the plunge in search of the truth, who thinks at first that thirteen versions are too many, may by the end of the case think that these are insufficient."
How many versions of the truth existed and how many versions does it take to get to the truth? A Dictator Calls unfolds through a baker's dozen variety of reports from KGB agents, reporters, mistresses, and others all in hopes that the protagonist can find out what was spoken about in that 200 second phone call that June day in 1934.
"I had no reason to dramatize the affair or complain to anybody, and still less to call this novel an obligation or... a rite. It was fuelled by my own incessant urge, which some people call a gift and others a madness or a demon. The other was infinitely larger. But the suitable material came vaguely and in riddles, until one day, without analyzing it thoroughly, I grasped a hold of it."
The premise and subject matter of the book's blurb had me all giddy to get to this book by Kadare. There were moments of clarity and pure enjoyment and others where I couldn't wait to get through it. It was hit at parts and mostly a miss at others. There was no real hook other than the ongoing hope that it would be more appealing with some sort of twist and yet it never arrived. The subject matter is interesting however, this book left me feeling kinda meh.
"History is usually reticent regarding what happens between poets and tyrants. The truth gives way to inventions, some memorable, others forgettable."
"This exteriorisation implies a question of who is to blame, the individual or his times? It is of course easier to believe in the fault of an indi- vidual or individuals, not to say entire peoples, than the guilt of an entire age."
"And so, we who know something about this matter are obliged to bear witness to it, even those aspects that are impossible to confirm. Moment by moment, second by second ... Just as he and all our brothers-in-art bore witness to it, without anybody knowing and without tak- ing anyone's side. Because art, unlike a tyrant, receives no mercy, but only gives it."
September 15, 2024
I'm sorry, but how is this a novel? A historical piece formed by multiple fan thrones of a tragic call. The premise of the book had such potential, yet the execution felt rushed, like not too much time should be spent in each version of the call before the reader would get bored.
Also, do we still need to keep putting women as rivals? Shouldn't we maybe focus more on the fact that Pasternak treated them horribly and there is no wonder they did not like each other?
Also, do we still need to keep putting women as rivals? Shouldn't we maybe focus more on the fact that Pasternak treated them horribly and there is no wonder they did not like each other?
August 10, 2024
Tirana, 2024
January 25, 2025
3.5/5
A deep dive into a three minute phone call between Stalin and poet/novelist Pasternak discussing the arrest of poet Mandelstam.
Split into three parts, the first exploring Kadare’s relationship already from the past to Pasternak and the similarities of their lives, the second with some context to the phone call, and the third meditative explorations of all thirteen credible versions of the phone call itself.
Kadare successfully brings to light the power soviet poets had to oppose or even humiliate dictators, and therefore the fear dictators may have of them. For me it further brought on general reflections of the power of “art� to oppose oppression, especially in the current political climate where many governments are cutting from the arts and banning books. And left me utterly inspired to go on a historical deep dive of soviet literary circle, as well as a motivation to read works by those mentioned in this book (Pasternak, Gorky, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pushkin and Mandelstam most significantly). I do think previous familiarity with some of the works of these names would have added more depth to the reading overall. That being said, I think this is a novel I will be reading again, as it has a lot to unpack and potential to bring light onto different aspects during each reading.
However, it feels as if Kadare went on a tangent more than once. Although everything he talks about is interesting, I did not always see the connection to the particular version of the phone call he was discussing . Furthermore it felt that parts one and two were slightly separate novels to part three (the one actually about the phone call).
A deep dive into a three minute phone call between Stalin and poet/novelist Pasternak discussing the arrest of poet Mandelstam.
Split into three parts, the first exploring Kadare’s relationship already from the past to Pasternak and the similarities of their lives, the second with some context to the phone call, and the third meditative explorations of all thirteen credible versions of the phone call itself.
Kadare successfully brings to light the power soviet poets had to oppose or even humiliate dictators, and therefore the fear dictators may have of them. For me it further brought on general reflections of the power of “art� to oppose oppression, especially in the current political climate where many governments are cutting from the arts and banning books. And left me utterly inspired to go on a historical deep dive of soviet literary circle, as well as a motivation to read works by those mentioned in this book (Pasternak, Gorky, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pushkin and Mandelstam most significantly). I do think previous familiarity with some of the works of these names would have added more depth to the reading overall. That being said, I think this is a novel I will be reading again, as it has a lot to unpack and potential to bring light onto different aspects during each reading.
However, it feels as if Kadare went on a tangent more than once. Although everything he talks about is interesting, I did not always see the connection to the particular version of the phone call he was discussing . Furthermore it felt that parts one and two were slightly separate novels to part three (the one actually about the phone call).
August 4, 2024
“…the curtain closed and all our questions open.�(Brecht)
A multilayered tragicomedy! An impressive piece about dictatorship and the realm of literature and poets. An impressive piece about professional envy, treason and friendship and the corruption of friendship. Not an easy read and it needs a bit of background knowledge about the years of Stalin’s purges and the widespread impact those had (and still have) as well as about Pasternak’s (literary)biography.
A multilayered tragicomedy! An impressive piece about dictatorship and the realm of literature and poets. An impressive piece about professional envy, treason and friendship and the corruption of friendship. Not an easy read and it needs a bit of background knowledge about the years of Stalin’s purges and the widespread impact those had (and still have) as well as about Pasternak’s (literary)biography.
May 28, 2024
I don't know exactly where I had heard about the (alleged) 1934 phone call Stalin made to the poet Boris Pasternak, but it was probably a university class. To appreciate this collection of interpretations of that phone call, I would recommend at least reading the wiki-page and having an interest in Russian literature/politics.
I picked this up on a whim after seeing it displayed at the library. At it's core it is thirteen versions of that phone call Stalin allegedly made to Pasternak, from , an Albanian novelist/poet that is exploring an historical event in a poetic and literary manner.
I picked this up on a whim after seeing it displayed at the library. At it's core it is thirteen versions of that phone call Stalin allegedly made to Pasternak, from , an Albanian novelist/poet that is exploring an historical event in a poetic and literary manner.
April 13, 2024
"The tyrant and the poet, however much they may seem opposites, both held power. The first associations of the word power can only be grim: oppression, violence, dispossession. Yet human language has also thought of gentler usages. Power can be used for bad ends, but an artistic genius has power, and so does a sweet fair-haired woman"
A Dictator Calls (written in Albanian by Ismail Kadare and translated by John Hodgson) surrounds a mysterious 3-minute phone call between the dictator Joseph Stalin and the famous Russian poet/novelist, Boris Pasternak (the author of the famous Doctor Zhivago and winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature) in 1934. What led to the phone call would be the arrest of Soviet poet, Osip Mandelstam (who in April 1934, recited his "Stalin Epigram" to Pasternak) and Stalin intends to seek Pasternak's views (or rather, the literary circle's views) on the arrest. Pasternak explained that he and Mandelstam were "different". Stalin then mockingly responded that Pasternak was unable to stick up for a comrade.
The novel is mainly told in 3 parts: Part One refers to the incident where Pasternak was forced to refuse the 1958 Nobel Prize (apparently the award enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and the narrator (most probably Kadare himself, as the novel took a metafictional / auto-fiction tone) mirrors this incident with his numerous nomination for the Prize (but eventually did not win it); Part Two focuses on the 3-minute phone call; Part Three consists of 13 perspectives and interpretation of the said phone call by different artists, poets, novelists, Pasternak's friends, wife, lovers, rivalries, secret agents. Told in non-linear and fragmentary prose (an obvious trait for all the books longlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize), Kadare examines art in light of dictatorship and oppression, the power dynamics between a dictator and artists, the defiance nature of artists and the tyranny's fear of art and such defiance. Though the premise seems interesting but perhaps it is too philosophical for me. A 3/5 star read.
A Dictator Calls (written in Albanian by Ismail Kadare and translated by John Hodgson) surrounds a mysterious 3-minute phone call between the dictator Joseph Stalin and the famous Russian poet/novelist, Boris Pasternak (the author of the famous Doctor Zhivago and winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature) in 1934. What led to the phone call would be the arrest of Soviet poet, Osip Mandelstam (who in April 1934, recited his "Stalin Epigram" to Pasternak) and Stalin intends to seek Pasternak's views (or rather, the literary circle's views) on the arrest. Pasternak explained that he and Mandelstam were "different". Stalin then mockingly responded that Pasternak was unable to stick up for a comrade.
The novel is mainly told in 3 parts: Part One refers to the incident where Pasternak was forced to refuse the 1958 Nobel Prize (apparently the award enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and the narrator (most probably Kadare himself, as the novel took a metafictional / auto-fiction tone) mirrors this incident with his numerous nomination for the Prize (but eventually did not win it); Part Two focuses on the 3-minute phone call; Part Three consists of 13 perspectives and interpretation of the said phone call by different artists, poets, novelists, Pasternak's friends, wife, lovers, rivalries, secret agents. Told in non-linear and fragmentary prose (an obvious trait for all the books longlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize), Kadare examines art in light of dictatorship and oppression, the power dynamics between a dictator and artists, the defiance nature of artists and the tyranny's fear of art and such defiance. Though the premise seems interesting but perhaps it is too philosophical for me. A 3/5 star read.
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