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Accursed Mountains
Travelling by bus, on foot, by mule and horse, staying with Albanians in their houses and crumbling Stalinist tower blocks, Robert Carver meets Vlach shepherds and village intellectuals, ex-Communist Special Forces officers and juvenile heroin smugglers, missionaries with jeeps and light planes, and ex-prisoners of Enver Hoxha who have spent 45 years in the Albanian gulag. In the remote villages of the Accursed Mountains of the far north, he is the first Briton seen since World War II, when Intelligence officers were parachuted in to help fight the German occupiers. On his journey to Lake Gashit, high above the snowline on the Serb-Montenegrin border, Carver survives murder attempts and suicidal bus rides. He sees villages last visited by outsiders in 1933, which had effectively been hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world.
352 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1996
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February 23, 2018
"Accursed" is in the mind of the beholder
As I began reading this volume, I was immediately put off by such statements as "..in Albania more or less nothing worked, nothing was available, and no one knew anything." or "duplicity and trickery were the currency of everyday life" or "Cynicism was intelligence, fairness stupidity." And to take a final, random example, "If there was one consistent trait the Albanians shared, it was to charge the foreigner the absolute maximum the market would bear." On top of such wildly general statements, the author allowed himself the use of such words as Wop and Froggy, expressing here and there his dislike of the strictures of political correctness. While not entirely disagreeing with that last point, I still don't like books that make use of such rubbish terms that add absolutely nothing to the topic at hand. So, I must say that I got off to a bad start with THE ACCURSED MOUNTAINS. I kept reading and now I am glad I did. In many ways the picture Carver draws is very accurate, and somehow, despite himself, he seems ultimately to like some of the people he meets. The further he was able to retreat into the past, the high mountains of the northern highlands where even the all-embracing Communism of the Hoxha years could not much penetrate, the happier he seems and the less likely to make sweeping negative statements. I have the ability to comment on his opinions because, strangely enough, I was travelling through Albania at exactly the same time he was--mid-1996---though not for as long. I did not have any contacts at all. The picture Carver gives of the economic situation is absolutely true--utter desolation, back to zero. As he had more political contacts, he could find out more than I did, but what he wrote rang very true to me. The politics of family, clan, and tribe had sprung back as if it had never been gone (it hadn't)and the words 'compromise', 'consensus' and 'practical program' seemed unknown. Where I disagree with Carver is in the nature of the Albanian people. Allowing for the two facts that a) the entire economy had totally collapsed and b)it was a Third World economy anyway, it was amazing to me how honest everyone was. In the weeks that I was there, nobody cheated us, only a couple minor attempts were made even to try, and desperately poor street vendors would return you the correct change even if you had understood "50" instead of "15" due to poor Albanian. Dirt poor people would insist on paying for your coffee, your drinks; hospitality was universal. Con-men existed, but primarily in the world of package tourism, which, despite Carver's denial, did seem to be getting a toehold at that time. Carver reports roadblocks where police extorted money from bus and van drivers every few miles (it seems). I travelled from north to south, east to west, on regular buses, quick vans, taxis, newspaper delivery vans, and the train, never finding even one instance of this, though wide travels elsewhere in the Third World make me aware of how common it is. Carver sees bandits on the road---oops, they are only a bunch of refugee kids. He almost gets shot on a desolate road but---oops, the pistols all fire at a target set up a moment ago. The Macedonian border was shut off but---oops, I went through it with no difficulty. I can easily share his feelings of anxiety--and equally shared the experience of being warned in America before leaving that Albanians were thieves, murderers, bandits, etc. But somehow my fears dissolved while his did not. If you don't mind living with those fears, despite the hospitality he received, the kindness of people who had next to nothing, but shared it with him, then you ought to read this book, ignoring some of the parts that try to make Albania sound much more horrendous than it is (or was in 1996). I share Carver's vision of the rising tide of desperate Third World people who are going to overwhelm the more organized countries in search of order and prosperity, thereby destroying what they came for. Albania's tragedy is yet another one, sending out floods of desperate people. There was no need to make it worse than it is.
As I began reading this volume, I was immediately put off by such statements as "..in Albania more or less nothing worked, nothing was available, and no one knew anything." or "duplicity and trickery were the currency of everyday life" or "Cynicism was intelligence, fairness stupidity." And to take a final, random example, "If there was one consistent trait the Albanians shared, it was to charge the foreigner the absolute maximum the market would bear." On top of such wildly general statements, the author allowed himself the use of such words as Wop and Froggy, expressing here and there his dislike of the strictures of political correctness. While not entirely disagreeing with that last point, I still don't like books that make use of such rubbish terms that add absolutely nothing to the topic at hand. So, I must say that I got off to a bad start with THE ACCURSED MOUNTAINS. I kept reading and now I am glad I did. In many ways the picture Carver draws is very accurate, and somehow, despite himself, he seems ultimately to like some of the people he meets. The further he was able to retreat into the past, the high mountains of the northern highlands where even the all-embracing Communism of the Hoxha years could not much penetrate, the happier he seems and the less likely to make sweeping negative statements. I have the ability to comment on his opinions because, strangely enough, I was travelling through Albania at exactly the same time he was--mid-1996---though not for as long. I did not have any contacts at all. The picture Carver gives of the economic situation is absolutely true--utter desolation, back to zero. As he had more political contacts, he could find out more than I did, but what he wrote rang very true to me. The politics of family, clan, and tribe had sprung back as if it had never been gone (it hadn't)and the words 'compromise', 'consensus' and 'practical program' seemed unknown. Where I disagree with Carver is in the nature of the Albanian people. Allowing for the two facts that a) the entire economy had totally collapsed and b)it was a Third World economy anyway, it was amazing to me how honest everyone was. In the weeks that I was there, nobody cheated us, only a couple minor attempts were made even to try, and desperately poor street vendors would return you the correct change even if you had understood "50" instead of "15" due to poor Albanian. Dirt poor people would insist on paying for your coffee, your drinks; hospitality was universal. Con-men existed, but primarily in the world of package tourism, which, despite Carver's denial, did seem to be getting a toehold at that time. Carver reports roadblocks where police extorted money from bus and van drivers every few miles (it seems). I travelled from north to south, east to west, on regular buses, quick vans, taxis, newspaper delivery vans, and the train, never finding even one instance of this, though wide travels elsewhere in the Third World make me aware of how common it is. Carver sees bandits on the road---oops, they are only a bunch of refugee kids. He almost gets shot on a desolate road but---oops, the pistols all fire at a target set up a moment ago. The Macedonian border was shut off but---oops, I went through it with no difficulty. I can easily share his feelings of anxiety--and equally shared the experience of being warned in America before leaving that Albanians were thieves, murderers, bandits, etc. But somehow my fears dissolved while his did not. If you don't mind living with those fears, despite the hospitality he received, the kindness of people who had next to nothing, but shared it with him, then you ought to read this book, ignoring some of the parts that try to make Albania sound much more horrendous than it is (or was in 1996). I share Carver's vision of the rising tide of desperate Third World people who are going to overwhelm the more organized countries in search of order and prosperity, thereby destroying what they came for. Albania's tragedy is yet another one, sending out floods of desperate people. There was no need to make it worse than it is.
April 23, 2020
Lake Pogradec by the ‘not quite so accursed mountains’ of south east Albania, scene of the now famous ‘fish restaurant stitch-up' incident. Pic. A. LaSavio.
In the pocket of his increasingly tatty travel trousers Robert Carver carried an impressive business card during his 1996 passage through Albania: it said ‘Freelance BBC Broadcaster - author - film-maker’ (in 7 languages) to establish his credentials where necessary. ‘The Accursed Mountains’ is his fabulous account of the country post-communism and pre-anarchy of 1997. It is a personal travelogue with rich seams of the land’s history running through it.
Having lived in Albania myself for a decade, it is with some self-reproach that I took so long to arrive at reading it. Carver’s observations are highly insightful about the culture, funny and at times painfully déjà vu to read, like how, as a foreigner, he got financially skinned at a fish restaurant on Lake Pogradec... poor man. He writes poignantly of one refugee being evicted off a bus near Leskovik and left at the roadside ‘staring at us as if at a passing lifeboat in mid-Atlantic’. He records a Greek taxi-driver’s description of Albania as: “...just like Greece used to be after the civil war. No cars, much poverty, broken houses, donkeys and mules, no work, but... but...”
“...a sweetness?” suggests Carver.
“Yes, a sweetness,” the driver replies. He writes of the whole place resembling the post-war Italy of Vittorio De Sica’s film ‘Bicycle Thieves’, and of the surreal aspects of ‘90s Albania: a brown bear chained up outside a gynaecological clinic in Tirana, and the broken neon lights of ‘Ali Pasha’s Disco-Boogie Club’.
Though at times what he records strikes a relentlessly bleak, even brutal tone, it is nevertheless not unfair: the cruelty in the country’s past; the tragedy in its present; the ruined, shabbiness of everything then were so. Albanians, though, are given occasional voices for a reverse assessment. One woman says of Britain after she had just holidayed there: “Very clean, very rich. But there is no family life and everyone works so much, all the time. And the women are hard, like men, and the men are soft, like women. In England the women are beating the men, I think,” she says. His respect for the missionaries who helped him around the remoter north comes through, despite the insinuation that two of them in Bajram Curri, ‘the Dodge City’ of northern Albania, were probably CIA agents.
The postscript ‘where are they now’ raises an ache to know that the cast of characters Carver met were okay, that they made it out of the ensuing chaos of ’97 alive. Some of them didn’t. His mountain guide, Major-Doctor Bajraktar, was ambushed and murdered whilst gun-running for the KLA. And what really happened to ‘Natasha of the nomenclature’ in the UK? It was with some delight that one central character was discretely pointed out to me, alive and well in August 2013, just a few feet away in a crowd. “No... it can’t be him... is it really?” I said. “Yes,” my confidant assured me, “That’s him.”
This is a vivid and perceptive travel narrative from an erudite writer who wowed me with his capacity to repeatedly nail things so well. It holds its own with the works he refers to, Edith Durham’s ‘High Albania’ and Julian Amery’s ‘Sons of the Eagle’, on the top shelf of British sojourners in the country.
A book by the reviewer set in Albania:
May 25, 2017
This might have been an interesting book if it hadn't been written by a smug, sexist, sanctimonious man with a highly inflated sense of his own superiority.
October 15, 2014
I read this a long time ago, shortly after it came out and before it seemed possible that I would ever live in Albania, and I remember it with some distaste. The picture it paints is bleak and it's widely accepted now to have been unfair even then. I don't read travel books for their accuracy and impartiality... but even so, this was rather heavy with paranoia and misery. Relentless really. I would read it again, though, if I could get it from the Inverness shed where my copy is presently buried. Hard to find otherwise. I may have to buy it from the amazing Adrion bookshop here in Tirana, where it has just appeared in the stacks. As has a lot of Murakami, alongside of course all of Kadare, in four languages. As if I had time to read anything.
July 31, 2013
So, in the interest of full disclosure: I'm half-Albanian on my mother's side (my grandmother was born in the US to a family that emigrated from Albania; my grandfather emigrated from Albania at a young age.) My great-uncle gave this to me a long time ago to read for a college essay - I discarded it when it became clear a few chapters in that there wasn't any scholarly material to be found.
I picked this up again during summer camp a few years back. Someone stopped me and asked "Albania - isn't that where Voldemort is from?" (Nope - it's where he found Ravenclaw's diadem.)
Anyhow:
I wanted to like this book - and maybe it's a failing of mine that I didn't like it - but a travel book where the author comes across as a huge jerk just isn't entertaining to me. Carver spends the first half of the book tiptoeing around openly sneering at the people in the south, and the second half of the book in a bit of wish fulfillment in the undeveloped north that comes across as gross once you've read 300 pages of him sucking up to embassy officials, wistfully dreaming about how the country must have been in the past, freaking out about being shot, and commenting on how he could've had his pick of (possibly underage) women looking for a way out of the country. Even if you're willing to look past all that, the snide remark he makes in the postscript about how a young man he met in Albania died during the 1997 violence says a lot. I can't say I enjoyed this, I can't say I feel very enriched for reading it, and I can't say I'm going to recommend it to anyone.
A friend of mine once said that if you're going to criticize something, you have to say something good and something bad. The something good: I think that Carver's really right about the harmful effect foreign aid can have on other countries, and does a good job of showing how the breakdown of the Communist government was a negative for the country in some ways.
I picked this up again during summer camp a few years back. Someone stopped me and asked "Albania - isn't that where Voldemort is from?" (Nope - it's where he found Ravenclaw's diadem.)
Anyhow:
I wanted to like this book - and maybe it's a failing of mine that I didn't like it - but a travel book where the author comes across as a huge jerk just isn't entertaining to me. Carver spends the first half of the book tiptoeing around openly sneering at the people in the south, and the second half of the book in a bit of wish fulfillment in the undeveloped north that comes across as gross once you've read 300 pages of him sucking up to embassy officials, wistfully dreaming about how the country must have been in the past, freaking out about being shot, and commenting on how he could've had his pick of (possibly underage) women looking for a way out of the country. Even if you're willing to look past all that, the snide remark he makes in the postscript about how a young man he met in Albania died during the 1997 violence says a lot. I can't say I enjoyed this, I can't say I feel very enriched for reading it, and I can't say I'm going to recommend it to anyone.
A friend of mine once said that if you're going to criticize something, you have to say something good and something bad. The something good: I think that Carver's really right about the harmful effect foreign aid can have on other countries, and does a good job of showing how the breakdown of the Communist government was a negative for the country in some ways.
May 20, 2012
Questions I am struggling with as I begin reviewing Robert Carver's The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania:
What is the point of reviewing/eviscerating a little-known (and now out-of-print) book about a little-known country?
Should I even bother reviewing the book, or just launch my attack on people (see: Greg Mortensen) labeling their Awesome Stories “non-fiction” because they know that only a handful of people will be able to see through their bullshit?
Should I address everything that is stomach-turning about this book (see: the author's sexism*, wishful thinking/dramatics, and lack of respect and understanding about Albanian culture; that huge and basic errors in the Albanian printed within show that Carver did not collaborate with Albanians even to get the damn phrases right) or just the big ones?
Really, after listing those things out I realize that there is nothing I want to say about this book that I can hold back from saying, even though exactly zero (0) of my readers will ever lay hands on Carver's masterwork. As someone who has lived in the Balkans, it's absolutely clear to me that Carver's travelogue is as much a product of his imagination and the spy thrillers he reads as anything that actually happens around here; and my suspicions about this work leave me feeling nearly as unsettled as I did after I finished reading Three Cups of Tea with the sense that Mortensen had managed to pull one over on every person who had never worked in foreign aid.
So, where to start. Carver visits Albania in 1996, just five years after the fall of Communism and shortly before the 1997 collapse of the pyramid schemes that many Albanians had invested their life savings in. Although the book's title refers to the Accursed Mountains of the country's north, Carver spends more of his three months in Albania in the south and in the country's capital, Tirana, lending the book a slightly unbalanced feel.
Carver makes some astute observations about the Albanian character and, in particular, about what the easy availability of Western foreign aid has done to the country. He describes Albanians as “Westernized but not Western” (26), which is about the best way I can think of describing the Balkans today – many people listen to American music, watch American films, dress in American styles, but maintain a very Albanian mindset. Carver makes some good points, as well, about what Communism followed by foreign aid has done to the local initiative, writing that “nothing would ever be done to clean up and rebuild the country, because that was always and would always be 'someone else's' job” (26).
It's unfortunate, then, that the things Carver gets right about the country are so outweighed by what he gets horribly, and seemingly purposely, wrong. Carver doesn't take a single bus journey that doesn't involve numerous stops to pay off local policemen and/or bandits. Within a hundred pages of the book's start, the writer is convinced that people are plotting to kill him at every turn. Given that Albania had been home to Peace Corps Volunteers since 1992 (and Peace Corps doesn't place its volunteers in countries where Americans are regularly hunted down by wily locals), it's only logical to conclude that Carver's conviction that so many Albanians were out to harm him is the result of either an unbalanced mind or a desire to sell more copies by dramatizing the story a bit. Probably the latter, since the lead-in to the sixth chapter of The Accursed Mountains is, “The first attempt to murder and rob me was a hopelessly amateur affair” (88). This attitude of paranoia pervades the remaining 250 pages of the book.
That Carver chooses to show Albanians in such a light is offensive precisely because it is a country that is known by so few. To color an entire nation as being populated by thieves, rapists, and murderers, as Carver does, is an irresponsible act. It's one that's all the more upsetting for the moments in which Carver reveals himself to have known so little Albanian during his travels, and to have done so little fact-checking while writing his book, that he was not even able to get correct something as simple as asking for a coffee “without sugar.” (He writes “ska sheker.” It should be “pa sheqer.” Literally, the first thing I learned to say in Albanian.) And yet, to most readers of The Accursed Mountains, Carver's word would be taken as good as fact, just as so many readers believed what Greg Mortensen laid out in Three Cups of Tea. Maybe the impact wasn't as wide-ranging here as with Three Cups – Carver, after all, didn't find a way to make millions via a charity playing off the goodwill of his readers – but it's upsetting nonetheless to think of an author twisting his story in order, presumably, to sell more books.
What else does Carver get wrong? The biggest fault is probably when he writes about the Kanun of Lek Dukagjini. The Kanun is a code of law that Albanians in the northern mountains used to govern themselves – I wrote about it a while back in relation to an article about blood feuds. The Kanun of Lek Dukagjini is just one example of these law codes, and the best known. Carver seems unaware that there are other Kanuns, and makes the further error of writing about all Albanian society, northern and southern, in light of the Kanun. If Carver had spent even a few weeks reading about Albania, he would have known that his entire chapter on the Kanun deserved to be cut.
For all the times that publishers have been criticized for not fact-checking anything they publish (is this an exaggeration? I don't have a fact checker to tell me), they're going to continue printing books like The Accursed Mountains that are full of factual errors and offer a false picture of something most people will never experience for themselves. I guess the unfortunate conclusion is that we have to approach all these books with caution and suspicion, an awareness of the limitations of our own knowledge, and an awareness that the author in some cases may be seeking to sell books rather than offer something close to the truth. Which, frankly, sucks.
* Further offenses, that as a woman I feel I can't leave off without mentioning, come in the form of Carver's sexism. The man appears incapable of describing a woman other than by the size of her breasts; he seems to view women as nothing more than a pair of legs with a pair of breasts attached at the top. See:
What is the point of reviewing/eviscerating a little-known (and now out-of-print) book about a little-known country?
Should I even bother reviewing the book, or just launch my attack on people (see: Greg Mortensen) labeling their Awesome Stories “non-fiction” because they know that only a handful of people will be able to see through their bullshit?
Should I address everything that is stomach-turning about this book (see: the author's sexism*, wishful thinking/dramatics, and lack of respect and understanding about Albanian culture; that huge and basic errors in the Albanian printed within show that Carver did not collaborate with Albanians even to get the damn phrases right) or just the big ones?
Really, after listing those things out I realize that there is nothing I want to say about this book that I can hold back from saying, even though exactly zero (0) of my readers will ever lay hands on Carver's masterwork. As someone who has lived in the Balkans, it's absolutely clear to me that Carver's travelogue is as much a product of his imagination and the spy thrillers he reads as anything that actually happens around here; and my suspicions about this work leave me feeling nearly as unsettled as I did after I finished reading Three Cups of Tea with the sense that Mortensen had managed to pull one over on every person who had never worked in foreign aid.
So, where to start. Carver visits Albania in 1996, just five years after the fall of Communism and shortly before the 1997 collapse of the pyramid schemes that many Albanians had invested their life savings in. Although the book's title refers to the Accursed Mountains of the country's north, Carver spends more of his three months in Albania in the south and in the country's capital, Tirana, lending the book a slightly unbalanced feel.
Carver makes some astute observations about the Albanian character and, in particular, about what the easy availability of Western foreign aid has done to the country. He describes Albanians as “Westernized but not Western” (26), which is about the best way I can think of describing the Balkans today – many people listen to American music, watch American films, dress in American styles, but maintain a very Albanian mindset. Carver makes some good points, as well, about what Communism followed by foreign aid has done to the local initiative, writing that “nothing would ever be done to clean up and rebuild the country, because that was always and would always be 'someone else's' job” (26).
It's unfortunate, then, that the things Carver gets right about the country are so outweighed by what he gets horribly, and seemingly purposely, wrong. Carver doesn't take a single bus journey that doesn't involve numerous stops to pay off local policemen and/or bandits. Within a hundred pages of the book's start, the writer is convinced that people are plotting to kill him at every turn. Given that Albania had been home to Peace Corps Volunteers since 1992 (and Peace Corps doesn't place its volunteers in countries where Americans are regularly hunted down by wily locals), it's only logical to conclude that Carver's conviction that so many Albanians were out to harm him is the result of either an unbalanced mind or a desire to sell more copies by dramatizing the story a bit. Probably the latter, since the lead-in to the sixth chapter of The Accursed Mountains is, “The first attempt to murder and rob me was a hopelessly amateur affair” (88). This attitude of paranoia pervades the remaining 250 pages of the book.
That Carver chooses to show Albanians in such a light is offensive precisely because it is a country that is known by so few. To color an entire nation as being populated by thieves, rapists, and murderers, as Carver does, is an irresponsible act. It's one that's all the more upsetting for the moments in which Carver reveals himself to have known so little Albanian during his travels, and to have done so little fact-checking while writing his book, that he was not even able to get correct something as simple as asking for a coffee “without sugar.” (He writes “ska sheker.” It should be “pa sheqer.” Literally, the first thing I learned to say in Albanian.) And yet, to most readers of The Accursed Mountains, Carver's word would be taken as good as fact, just as so many readers believed what Greg Mortensen laid out in Three Cups of Tea. Maybe the impact wasn't as wide-ranging here as with Three Cups – Carver, after all, didn't find a way to make millions via a charity playing off the goodwill of his readers – but it's upsetting nonetheless to think of an author twisting his story in order, presumably, to sell more books.
What else does Carver get wrong? The biggest fault is probably when he writes about the Kanun of Lek Dukagjini. The Kanun is a code of law that Albanians in the northern mountains used to govern themselves – I wrote about it a while back in relation to an article about blood feuds. The Kanun of Lek Dukagjini is just one example of these law codes, and the best known. Carver seems unaware that there are other Kanuns, and makes the further error of writing about all Albanian society, northern and southern, in light of the Kanun. If Carver had spent even a few weeks reading about Albania, he would have known that his entire chapter on the Kanun deserved to be cut.
For all the times that publishers have been criticized for not fact-checking anything they publish (is this an exaggeration? I don't have a fact checker to tell me), they're going to continue printing books like The Accursed Mountains that are full of factual errors and offer a false picture of something most people will never experience for themselves. I guess the unfortunate conclusion is that we have to approach all these books with caution and suspicion, an awareness of the limitations of our own knowledge, and an awareness that the author in some cases may be seeking to sell books rather than offer something close to the truth. Which, frankly, sucks.
* Further offenses, that as a woman I feel I can't leave off without mentioning, come in the form of Carver's sexism. The man appears incapable of describing a woman other than by the size of her breasts; he seems to view women as nothing more than a pair of legs with a pair of breasts attached at the top. See:
Prominent, unavoidably so, were also a pair of splendid, gauze-enveloped breasts which fully deserved to be declared national monuments in their own right. I didn't dare ask 'Falso or vero?', although it did cross my mind. (154)
February 28, 2024
I read this book because I'm traveling to Albania in May and it showed up on some list.
I began the book thinking I'd take the useful observations and file the rest under, "product of its time," meaning the day when salty [white male] journalists rolled handmade cigarettes as they rode with locals in rattly trucks around the war-torn countryside. Huzzah.
But the book wasn't published in 1950, but 1998.
Carver reports interesting observations about Albania in a particular time and place, while recovering from Soviet occupation. He describes the bunkers, falling statues and a people struggling to recover. Although the more I read the more I'd Google places he'd seen and wonder why all he could talk about was getting charged too much at a fish restaurant when surrounded by such stupendous beauty.
The sexism is laughable. HA. This Brit clearly yearns to see himself as some Sean Connery Bond. HA.
Carver whines about dysentery (and who doesn't get "tummy trouble" while traveling?) and refers to his anus as his "bottom." HA.
By the end, Carver's repetitive lectures geared towards Albanians grate, reminding me of J.D. Vance waving his recently-acquired Ralph Lauren bootstrap, "See this here? Get to work, fellas." I lost patience.
Carver is a solid writer. Wish he'd used those skills to show more compassion and insight to the country he visited. Anthony Bourdain would have hated this guy.
I look forward to visiting these same places and expressing more gratitude to the people who show me hospitality, and more admiration of the stunning lakes, rivers, and mountains.
I began the book thinking I'd take the useful observations and file the rest under, "product of its time," meaning the day when salty [white male] journalists rolled handmade cigarettes as they rode with locals in rattly trucks around the war-torn countryside. Huzzah.
But the book wasn't published in 1950, but 1998.
Carver reports interesting observations about Albania in a particular time and place, while recovering from Soviet occupation. He describes the bunkers, falling statues and a people struggling to recover. Although the more I read the more I'd Google places he'd seen and wonder why all he could talk about was getting charged too much at a fish restaurant when surrounded by such stupendous beauty.
The sexism is laughable. HA. This Brit clearly yearns to see himself as some Sean Connery Bond. HA.
Carver whines about dysentery (and who doesn't get "tummy trouble" while traveling?) and refers to his anus as his "bottom." HA.
By the end, Carver's repetitive lectures geared towards Albanians grate, reminding me of J.D. Vance waving his recently-acquired Ralph Lauren bootstrap, "See this here? Get to work, fellas." I lost patience.
Carver is a solid writer. Wish he'd used those skills to show more compassion and insight to the country he visited. Anthony Bourdain would have hated this guy.
I look forward to visiting these same places and expressing more gratitude to the people who show me hospitality, and more admiration of the stunning lakes, rivers, and mountains.
April 27, 2018
You would think this book was written about a post-apocalyptic fallout zone but no, these are the journeys of a British man travelling through Albania in 1996.
The author mapped out a great route, covering many of the rural, mountainous areas. He arranged meeting and staying with the locals so as to gain the insights of different types of people.
The overall sense of the book is incredibly bleak. After centuries of one foreign occupation after another, the author’s impression is one of national dependence on foreign aid with a twist...whoever can swindle, steal or kill for the imports gets them. Or else a plan to leave. There appears to be a culture devoid of morals and there are many instances of blood feuds reminiscent of feudal times.
I certainly hope this is a distorted view of Albania as there was barely any redeeming reasons for a tourist to go there nor a local to remain there. Or perhaps things have changed.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes travel journals set in places off the beaten track.
The author mapped out a great route, covering many of the rural, mountainous areas. He arranged meeting and staying with the locals so as to gain the insights of different types of people.
The overall sense of the book is incredibly bleak. After centuries of one foreign occupation after another, the author’s impression is one of national dependence on foreign aid with a twist...whoever can swindle, steal or kill for the imports gets them. Or else a plan to leave. There appears to be a culture devoid of morals and there are many instances of blood feuds reminiscent of feudal times.
I certainly hope this is a distorted view of Albania as there was barely any redeeming reasons for a tourist to go there nor a local to remain there. Or perhaps things have changed.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes travel journals set in places off the beaten track.
February 11, 2008
I thought this book was rather fascinating. I have read reviews that say there are much better books out there on Albania, but I enjoyed this book enough that I am interested in doing additional reading about Albania. He did seem a bit cocky at times (like the part where he has pizza with the young lady and thinks he has a chance with her). But again, I learned some things and I am looking forward to learning more.
September 24, 2012
This so called book looked quite attractive when I bought it. I began reading it passionately because I love travel-writing and soon after I realized that this so called greek writer had one mission - and sadly, that wasn't the mission of writing a book! If you want political propaganda and missing out the real truth about Albania than please go ahead and buy you this book. Even worse read it too...and you'll realize what I've been warning you about all along!
June 17, 2021
I am going to be living in Albania for the next two years. . . this book was informative, sometimes funny and sometimes scary. I think that some of the authors insights into Albania's culture and life of the everyday people is going to be very helpful for me. I recommend this book for anyone that is curious about Albania and especially anyone that wants to visit me!
August 21, 2022
I loved this unsentimental travel journal back in 1996 and have re-read it twice since. The images and the adventures still stick in my mind as does the evocation of an isolated and ostracised country lost in the middle of Europe.
October 14, 2012
A must read for anyone interested in Balkan History.
February 23, 2016
Probably a bit dated, as hopefully the Albanians have more experience now with capitalism. But it is a vivid description of a feudal/tribal way of life.
September 2, 2024
The historical and geographical settings of this book are very interesting, but I found the writer's tone and style extremely obnoxious and smug. Instead of just letting his descriptions of people, places, and events speak for themselves, Carver cannot resist making sweeping, patronizing, and essentialistic (but sometimes contradictory) conclusions about Albania and its people. He hates how "feminized" British society has become and fantasizes about how moving to Eastern Europe in the 90s would be "like emigrating back to the England of 1968 -- few cars, no stereo, a cold flat in a cold, snowy northern city, where the girls bravely made the most of what little they had and love trembled in the air with the blue cigarette smoke in night-clubs thick with the reek of alcohol, testosterone and poverty." So in 2020s speak he might be considered a bit of a trad incel, but beyond that there is no real ideology but scorn. There are, however, so so many old British travel writer cliches: if I had a lek for every time he said that a place had been unchanged for 50, 200, 500, 1000, even 2000 years, or for every time he made a comparison to Afghanistan (where it's not clear that he has even been)....Carver doesn't speak Albanian, and only spent two and a half months in Albania, but he declares himself an expert of sorts merely because the places he's been are so dangerous and difficult to get to. Carver leans so heavily on past generations of more talented travel writers (Edith Durham, Rebecca West, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Graham Green), that you might as well read their work instead, especially if Carver is right in his insistance that nothing has actually changed in Albania (or the Balkans, or the "Third World" in general) since their time. Or maybe read something written by an Albanian, or someone who knows the country a bit better than this guy.
November 6, 2024
I bought this at random way back in about 2000 and really loved its warts-and-all (almost all warts) portrait of the country nine months before the collapse of the first Berisha regime. Rereading now I still think it’s an admirable travelogue. Carver is in the lineage of painfully honest travelers with Smollett, Twain, Waugh, Theroux, although less comical than them. He paints a thoroughly bleak picture of the country in 1996 as a failed state, the dislodgement of the corpulent Hoxha having unleashed every variety of anarchy imaginable. He gets a lot of abuse for this, both from Albanians he meets in the book, blinkered by national pride, and in the reviews of the book online, but I wouldn’t have it otherwise. He covers a lot of ground, meets with a wide range of Albanians from soi-disant intellectuals in the South to Gheg herders in the titular mountains, and gives them plenty of room to speak.
What drags it down a star on this read is Carver’s misogyny. It’s sad to see him trying to get in the pants of a woman half his age in Tirana, and depressing to read his barely-disguised approval of the servile position of Albanian women in the home. He’s just another middle-aged guy who’s upset that feminism has taught women to say no to lechers like him.
Still, this is very well-written, grimly entertaining travel writing about a unique country at a unique point in time.
What drags it down a star on this read is Carver’s misogyny. It’s sad to see him trying to get in the pants of a woman half his age in Tirana, and depressing to read his barely-disguised approval of the servile position of Albanian women in the home. He’s just another middle-aged guy who’s upset that feminism has taught women to say no to lechers like him.
Still, this is very well-written, grimly entertaining travel writing about a unique country at a unique point in time.
January 10, 2024
This is an absorbing account of the author's travels from the south to the north of Albania in 1996 just before the country collapsed into anarchy. The Greek-based writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, recommended Albania as a place right "off the map". As he goes, the author enjoys the hospitality of local families while the country is falling apart with irregular water and electricity supplies. However, a guest is always welcome. As civil society is collapsing, he finds that the traditional clan system is re-establishing itself. Loyalty to the clan is paramount leading to bribery and corruption and worse, to violent revenge and blood feuds. It is a very patriarchal system where women have no voice. The author sees a dependency culture developing especially among the better educated Albanians. Sometimes it seems he does not like the Albanians very much though he admires some, like the practical doctor from a northern village who takes him high up into the "accursed" mountains.
I spent two weeks in Albania in 2022 and am glad to say that it is completely unrecognisable from this book. Still very poor but safe and seemingly functioning reasonably well.
I enjoyed reading the book. It would benefit from a glossary of Albanian terms
I spent two weeks in Albania in 2022 and am glad to say that it is completely unrecognisable from this book. Still very poor but safe and seemingly functioning reasonably well.
I enjoyed reading the book. It would benefit from a glossary of Albanian terms
February 12, 2019
Initially I was very excited by the prospect of this book, with rich descriptions about the land and the people. However the more I read, the more disconcerted I became. It quickly turned into a Westerner's 'holier than thou' visit to Albania. He is quick to lecture the Albanians about the deficiency of their ways and poor prospects. It quickly became a treatise on the adverse effects of communism and then once Communism is gone, the hazards of Western aid. A bit ironic since it is the Western countries themselves which has helped to topple Communism. Midway through the book, as the author lusts after a young albanian women he comically reflects on the impotence of Western European men and their perceived lack of masculinity. This is amusing as this is the same demographic he spent the first half of the book trying to show their superiority.
He spends the majority of the journey suspicious and leery of Albanians and spends most of the book propagating stereotypes while failing to develop any meaningful connections.
He spends the majority of the journey suspicious and leery of Albanians and spends most of the book propagating stereotypes while failing to develop any meaningful connections.
May 31, 2023
The account on pages 96-97 of Enver Hoxha having a sosi, or double, appears to be based on the book listed in Acknowledgements on pg.338, Biografi by Lloyd Jones. Jones is a well-known New Zealand novelist and the story of a body double is a work of fiction.
I had read Biografi some time before I read The Accursed Mountains. Given that Jones is a novelist, it never even occurred to me that Biografi was anything other than a work of fiction.
It is astounding that Robert Carver did not realise the same, and obviously made no attempt, while he was in Albania, to corroborate or fact check the body double story. It is equally incomprehensible that his editor at the publisher, John Murray, did not detect this absolute howler either.
This certainly casts into doubt any other ‘facts’ recorded in Carver’s book and suggests the possibility that his own entire work, like Biografi, is a work of fiction.
I had read Biografi some time before I read The Accursed Mountains. Given that Jones is a novelist, it never even occurred to me that Biografi was anything other than a work of fiction.
It is astounding that Robert Carver did not realise the same, and obviously made no attempt, while he was in Albania, to corroborate or fact check the body double story. It is equally incomprehensible that his editor at the publisher, John Murray, did not detect this absolute howler either.
This certainly casts into doubt any other ‘facts’ recorded in Carver’s book and suggests the possibility that his own entire work, like Biografi, is a work of fiction.
December 26, 2025
While this book has many flaws, mainly the arrogance of the author, I'm glad I read it. After a trip to Albania, I have been engrossed in the unique culture, especially of the very rural areas. Amazing and hard to believe, but from burrneshas (women who vow lifelong chastity to gain the rights, status, and freedoms of men, like owning property, working, and living independently) to blood feuds, and thousands of underground bunkers to nodding your head to mean no and shaking to mean yes, Albania is a fascinating place with a most unique culture.
One more interesting fact: there are more Albanians living abroad than in the country itself. Its harsh communist regime caused many to flee. Mother Teresa was one of the emigrants.
One more interesting fact: there are more Albanians living abroad than in the country itself. Its harsh communist regime caused many to flee. Mother Teresa was one of the emigrants.
October 18, 2022
I loved this book. Instantly became possibly my favourite travel book - well, certainly of the last few years. Carver really gets in amongst the local people and delivers a fascinating, sometimes horrifying, and generally despairing glimpse of Albania in the 1990s.
Apparently, the country has recovered substantially from the situation as it stood when Carver visited so thankfully this book is now more of a historical snapshot of a country caught between tradition, modernity and a history of totalitarianism. But it's also, in my opinion, a great insight into human nature and society and how, in the end, the little guy will always get squished by the rich and powerful. Highly recommended.
Apparently, the country has recovered substantially from the situation as it stood when Carver visited so thankfully this book is now more of a historical snapshot of a country caught between tradition, modernity and a history of totalitarianism. But it's also, in my opinion, a great insight into human nature and society and how, in the end, the little guy will always get squished by the rich and powerful. Highly recommended.
May 28, 2021
The author decides to go to Albania for three months and write about the country. Unbeknowst to him, he catches it right between two big events. He's there when communism ends and a democratic party wins the elections. But it doesn't last long. All the details about what he experienced and whom he meets up with was quite interesting. But I was very put off with his comments and agreement to the cultural idea that women should wait on men. His misogynistic comments really bothered me. It took so much away from his other observations.
October 13, 2022
I like his style and the images he conjures, especially as I was reading this while travelling through Albania nearly 25 years on from when the book was written. So the contrast of our experience was really good. The places he struggled with were the same that I went through untouched and without fear.
HOWEVER, the Orientalism and more important the blatant sexism and misogyny made me physically flinch.
HOWEVER, the Orientalism and more important the blatant sexism and misogyny made me physically flinch.
August 11, 2022
I really appreciate this book. I like the honesty of Robert Carvers travels and I am looking forward to finding more travels by Robert. This book took place in the 1990s and I am looking to learn about Albania and to see if and how much they have changed in the last 20 years.
March 3, 2013
This is just a fabulous book about the author who goes on a journey to Albania, starting from the southern part, border to Greece and goes all the way up, to the ''cursed'' dangerous mountainous region of the north. All this journey happens at a very delicate moment in history, the times of the brief reign of the Democratic Party in 1996, so a stretch between the socialist times of Enver Hosha and the new times where anarchy took over. It is also a tale about humankind, how people react to different circumstances and the like.
It actually started in me an urge to discover more... but that has to wait for next summer.
It actually started in me an urge to discover more... but that has to wait for next summer.
February 20, 2015
I won't deny that this book is a fascinating read. Do I have doubts about its authenticity? Absolutely. The Accursed Mountains seems like a scheme to paint Albania as a Balkan Afghanistan. Even Carver makes numerous comparisons to hotspots like Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Congo several times throughout this book. From my viewpoint, Carver only went to Albania to write a thriller, not experience the culture. I quickly became frustrated with his assumption that every young Albanian male was out to rob him, steal his passport and/or kill him. This book isn't one that I would recommend in order to receive a fair portrayal of 1990s Albania.
February 14, 2025
Carver’s book is more than just a travel diary; He enters the country through Greece by Prespa Lake, where the border is practically wide open—a stark contrast to the decades of extreme isolation enforced by Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship. His arrival coincides with the mass exodus of Albanians seeking a new life abroad. What he finds inside Albania is a nation in flux: roads and buildings are crumbling from years of neglect, but there is an undeniable sense of optimism. People are smiling, embracing the new beginning despite the instability. He captures Albania’s contradictions—its beauty and its decay, its warmth and its dangers (guns and everywhere), its past, and its hopes for the future.
December 25, 2007
Can it be as wild as made out in this book? I'm a bit dubious whether it's still that bad there...
July 19, 2010
ALBANIA - Very good travel book with lots of history. Perfect for my Albania study.
March 10, 2012
Wonderful - loved it
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