The Doll - Hardback

From the winner of the first-ever Man Booker International Prize- a novel about creative origin and aspiration inspired by Ismail Kadare's childhood in Albania. She surrendered the freedom and authority of a mother in short turned herself into a doll to give me all possible liberty as a human being in a world where freedom was so rare and hard to find like crusts of rationed bread in the time of the Germans which she broke off from her own small portion and secretly gave to me. In this autobiographical novella Kadare explores the complex and mystifying relationship between the Doll -- naive old-fashioned unchanging and enigmatic -- and her son a writer and free-thinking intellectual who uses words she does not understand and publishes poetry rejecting marriage and other traditions. Young Ismail seems to be renouncing everything the Doll embodies from the old-world and as his reputation as a writer grows she worries that he will exchange her for a better mother. Her unassailable fear confounds him. Dedicated to the memory of Kadare's mother THE DOLL is a delicate account of home family creative aspiration and personal and political freedom woven together in haunting elliptical prose.