Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

Description

A story of a country attempting to reconcile its new freedom with old rituals, secrets and betrayals. From behind the closed door, the man shouts, 'Be on your way - you have no business here!' 'Open up, I am the messenger of Death'. As spring arrives in the Albanian mountain town of B, some strange things are emerging in the thaw. Bank robbers strike the National Bank. Old terrors are dredged up from the shipwreck of history. And ultra-explosive state secrets are threatening to flood the entire nation. Mark, an artist, finds the peaceful rhythms of his life turned upside down by ancient love and modern barbarism and by the particular brutality of a country surprised and divided by its new freedom.

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.

One of the many pleasures of Mr Kadare's writing is his supremely light touch * New York Times * The themes are so sinister, the prose so genial. Post-communist disillusion and southern playfulness are blended here with such skill and subtlety that one almost fails to register Kadare's shocking originality * Independent on Sunday * One of Europe's great writers * Los Angeles Times * He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare is an original voice, universal, yet deeply rooted in his own soul * Independent on Sunday *