 First edition (Albanian) | |
| Author | Ismail Kadare |
|---|---|
| Original title | Muzgu i perëndive të stepës |
| Translator | David Bellos |
| Language | Albanian |
| Publisher | Onufri Publishing House,Canongate Books |
Publication date | 1962–1978 |
| Publication place | Albania |
Published in English | 2014 |
| Pages | 192 |
| ISBN | 9780857866196 |
Twilight of the Eastern Gods (Albanian:Muzgu i perëndive të stepës, French:Le Crépuscule des dieux de la steppe) is a novel by the Albanian authorIsmail Kadare. It was published in installments inAlbania between 1962 and 1978, and published in full in 1981 in the French translation ofJusuf Vrioni.[1] The English translation byDavid Bellos, published in 2014, was made from Vrioni's French.[2]
The narrator is a young Albanian studying at theMaxim Gorky Literature Institute in the late 1950s, working on a novel about "a dead army commanded by a living general". The book focuses on the drabness of life in the student residence, and the suspicions and disaffection of the writers being trained to produceSocialist realist literature. The action of the novel takes place during the Soviet propaganda campaign that forcedBoris Pasternak to decline theNobel prize for literature forDr Zhivago.[3] It provides a lively parody of the fake public outrage of the campaign.[4]
Parallels with the life of Kadare, who also studied at the Gorky Institute in the late 1950s, and wrote an early novel entitledThe General of the Dead Army (1963), suggest that the narrator should be regarded as an alter ego of the author.[2]
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