In a seamless mosaic of dreams and games, a young boy reflects on events as his hometown in Albania falls to a series of invaders. Amid floods and bombings, his own innocence and wonder are lost forever in the madness and brutality of the Second World War.
A disturbing mix of tragedy and comedy, politics and sexuality, Chronicle in Stone is a fascinating masterpiece about what it means to grow up in a turbulent world.
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokaster, in the south of Albania. He studied in Tirana and Moscow, returning to Albania in 1960 after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union. Translations of his novels have since been published in more than forty countries, and in 2005 he became the first winner of the Man Booker International Prize.
David Bellos, Director of the Program in Translation at Princeton University, is also the translator of Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual and a winner of the Goncourt Prize for biography. He has translated seven of Ismail Kadare's novels, and in 2005 was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for his translations of Kadare's work.