The narrative unfurls with the shifting intensity of a dream, enriched by unsettlingly surreal details... It is a brilliant examination of the way that authoritarian structures operate: Kafka on a grander political scale.

Although on the surface this is a deeply compelling historical novel, its scope is wider. At heart, what Kadare seeks to demonstrate is the terrible nature of a world in which every human element is suborned to the state... Kadare well deserves his growing European audience.

An extraordinary and complex novel whose time has come...40 years after its initial publication [in Albanian]

In John Hodgson’s lucid translation, The Traitor’s Niche is absorbing from start to finish. Kadare’s allegorical burlesque has rarely been so trenchant.

The novel is a hymn to language, something that, as Ottoman bureaucrats intent on obliterating it instinctively know, and as Kadare’s novels prove, is not easily silenced

bewitching novel

Kadare [writes] with a sense of irony and a dark humour that often rise to the heights of absurdity, even when describing the most extreme situations.

Kadare has said that he believes “dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible”. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship and this extraordinary novel, though tempered and surreal, is an unquestionably defiant one.

A wonderful exploration of European and Ottoman history that is not easily put down once opened. The examination of imperial politics and people’s desire for independence is riveting and imaginative

Bewitching.

It had me laughing one moment then in tears the next… A well-told story of what life throws at us and how we adapted to tell our story, our ubuntu.

Dalila is one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve read in a while. Succinct yet beautifully descriptive, it would be impossible for any reader to come away from it without a renewed or newfound sympathy for genuine asylum seekers. This is an absorbing, heartbreaking novel.

Utterly compelling. Dalila, a multi-layered story of more than one displaced life, is as up-close, resonant and right-now as it gets.

Dalila is a riveting examination of one of today's most urgent issues. Telling the story of a young and desperate Kenyan asylum-seeker, Jason Donald writes with insight (and considerable inside knowledge) about the particular purgatory through which she and so many like her have to pass. All the more powerful for not being a mere polemic, Dalila is grippingly authentic, transparently truthful and exceptionally moving.

A compelling novel of a young woman’s struggle to find safety in a hostile world, Dalila examines some of the most important issues of our age. Powerful, compassionate and deeply human.

The character of Dalila, so courageous and dignified, so unassuming and yet so resilient, lives with the reader long after the book has been put down.