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Dasma
Romani “Lëkura e daulles” është botuar së pari me këtë titull në vitin 1967, në revistën “Nëntori”. Një vit më pas ka dalë si libër më vete nën titullin “Dasma”. Më pas, pas shkurtimeve të ndjeshme, është ribotuar më 1981 me titullin e kahershëm “Lëkura e daulles”.
Zanafilla e romanit ka qenë novela “Dasma e çuditshme”, me subjekt prishjen groteske të një dasme, si hakmarrje ndaj nuses, prej të dashurit të fyer.
Ndonëse i shpërfillur prej autorit, romani është përkthyer në disa vende perëndimore nga botues të majtë, përpara “Gjeneralit të ushtrisë së vdekur”. Një radio-dramatizim i veprës, me titullin “Dasma dhe fantazma”, është bërë prej BBC-së së Londrës më 1969.
Zanafilla e romanit ka qenë novela “Dasma e çuditshme”, me subjekt prishjen groteske të një dasme, si hakmarrje ndaj nuses, prej të dashurit të fyer.
Ndonëse i shpërfillur prej autorit, romani është përkthyer në disa vende perëndimore nga botues të majtë, përpara “Gjeneralit të ushtrisë së vdekur”. Një radio-dramatizim i veprës, me titullin “Dasma dhe fantazma”, është bërë prej BBC-së së Londrës më 1969.
159 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
3 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Ismail Kadare
273 books1,737 followersIsmail Kadare (also spelled Kadaré) was an Albanian novelist and poet. He has been a leading literary figure in Albania since the 1960s. He focused on short stories until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army. In 1996 he became a lifetime member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of France. In 1992, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; in 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, in 2009 the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts, and in 2015 the Jerusalem Prize. He has divided his time between Albania and France since 1990. Kadare has been mentioned as a possible recipient for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. His works have been published in about 30 languages.
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokastër, in the south of Albania. His education included studies at the University of Tirana and then the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow, a training school for writers and critics.
In 1960 Kadare returned to Albania after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union, and he became a journalist and published his first poems.
His first novel, The General of the Dead Army, sprang from a short story, and its success established his name in Albania and enabled Kadare to become a full-time writer.
Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They are obliquely ironic as a result of trying to withstand political scrutiny. Among his best known books are Chronicle in Stone (1977), Broken April (1978), and The Concert (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.
In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokastër, in the south of Albania. His education included studies at the University of Tirana and then the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow, a training school for writers and critics.
In 1960 Kadare returned to Albania after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union, and he became a journalist and published his first poems.
His first novel, The General of the Dead Army, sprang from a short story, and its success established his name in Albania and enabled Kadare to become a full-time writer.
Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They are obliquely ironic as a result of trying to withstand political scrutiny. Among his best known books are Chronicle in Stone (1977), Broken April (1978), and The Concert (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.
In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 23, 2015
This novel didn’t catch me. I found it hard to identify with one/ several of the characters, because they are presented more as symbols than persons, the development of the events is not fluent, but fragmented – no flow to go on. Underlying themes and motives don’t stand out enough; may be the author was ‘cautioned away’ by the feared censorship of the regime at the time (Albania in the sixties).
Another aspect is the translation. At the levels of words, expressions and sentences, it feels like staccato, dull and with too many Anglicisms. JM
Another aspect is the translation. At the levels of words, expressions and sentences, it feels like staccato, dull and with too many Anglicisms. JM
July 15, 2025
On a deserted Central Albanian plain in the late 1960s, a factory has just been built that is expected to eventually grow a whole new city around it, and nearby is a new, still-nameless train station to serve it. One drizzly night, a crowd of guests begin arriving for the first wedding held in this nascent community. Strangely, however, everyone is from the groom’s side and no one represents the bride’s family, until her father walks in like an apparition out of the hardscrabble, feud-filled mountains of the country’s north. Over the course of just this one evening, until the first train leaves the next morning, a whole world of events happens that blend tragedy with farce, mid-twentieth-century social commentary with ancient Balkan legend.
Dasma is one of Kadare’s better novels, provided that you read it in the edition, dated 1967, that is reprinted today in Albania. It was written after Kadare’s initial novels had either been coldly viewed by the Hoxha regime, or censored outright, and he had been sent to the provincial city of Berat to “learn from the people” and produce work more palatable to the authorities. This situation is mocked near the beginning of the novel, in a conversation between a writer known only by his initials D.D. and a newspaper man :
It’s easy to see why a wedding of proletarian characters, with intelligentsia and apparatchik guests, appealed to Kadare, as he could use this setting as a microcosm of Albania. Yet in spite of such a cast of working people and some issues of concern to the regime, his treatment of them refuses to conform to the dictates of socialist realism, and in many points overtly flaunts them; Kadare remained a storyteller who wanted to tell his own stories, and this was merely the material he worked on this occasion.
By the end, the novel feels akin to the twentieth-century modernism of Joyce and Faulker, though I’m not sure how much of that Kadare could have read in his deprived circumstances. The narrative is somewhat fractured in that each chapter moves from one part of the wedding, or the factory’s immediate surroundings, to another. Some chapters are rich with revelry and repartee between a crowd of characters, other chapters are told as a single character’s stream of consciousness. The reader has to piece some scattered clues together to grasp the main plot. This is an ample novel in spite of its short length, and when it shifts to humorous themes, it is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Even if its ambitions are limited, I would be happy to read it again someday and suspect that I would discover new things in it.
What I read, however, is not the only version of the novel. One edition that apparently served as the basis for the translations published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is very different. From the way Peter Morgan describes it in Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship, it contains some overtly socialist-realist elements. I understand now why the English edition pitched it as a “novel of women’s liberation” in a boldly socialist state, when in the version I read, the two subplots about women escaping male violence are told with more subtlety and art.
Dasma is one of Kadare’s better novels, provided that you read it in the edition, dated 1967, that is reprinted today in Albania. It was written after Kadare’s initial novels had either been coldly viewed by the Hoxha regime, or censored outright, and he had been sent to the provincial city of Berat to “learn from the people” and produce work more palatable to the authorities. This situation is mocked near the beginning of the novel, in a conversation between a writer known only by his initials D.D. and a newspaper man :
Përse ti ke shruar kaq pak për fabrikat? - pyeti gazetari.
D.D. rrotulloi gotën nëpër duar. - Të shkruash për fabrikat, - ia bëri. - Hë. Një fjalë goje.
It’s easy to see why a wedding of proletarian characters, with intelligentsia and apparatchik guests, appealed to Kadare, as he could use this setting as a microcosm of Albania. Yet in spite of such a cast of working people and some issues of concern to the regime, his treatment of them refuses to conform to the dictates of socialist realism, and in many points overtly flaunts them; Kadare remained a storyteller who wanted to tell his own stories, and this was merely the material he worked on this occasion.
By the end, the novel feels akin to the twentieth-century modernism of Joyce and Faulker, though I’m not sure how much of that Kadare could have read in his deprived circumstances. The narrative is somewhat fractured in that each chapter moves from one part of the wedding, or the factory’s immediate surroundings, to another. Some chapters are rich with revelry and repartee between a crowd of characters, other chapters are told as a single character’s stream of consciousness. The reader has to piece some scattered clues together to grasp the main plot. This is an ample novel in spite of its short length, and when it shifts to humorous themes, it is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Even if its ambitions are limited, I would be happy to read it again someday and suspect that I would discover new things in it.
What I read, however, is not the only version of the novel. One edition that apparently served as the basis for the translations published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is very different. From the way Peter Morgan describes it in Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship, it contains some overtly socialist-realist elements. I understand now why the English edition pitched it as a “novel of women’s liberation” in a boldly socialist state, when in the version I read, the two subplots about women escaping male violence are told with more subtlety and art.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews