An essential work. The Doll is mesmerising, and like Kadares family home conceals both darkness and flashes of light in its interior -- Nilanjana Roy * Financial Times * The poignant observation, bitter irony and misspoken fear running through the narrators central relationship with his mother, a woman secretly terrified of being disowned as unworthy the moment her son achieves the fame he so desires, are what dominate this fascinating study of a difficult love. -- John Burnside * Guardian * In a properly ordered world, Ismail Kadare would by now have got the Nobel prize for literature. By any reckoning, he is one of the most important living European writers, a man whose work is as compelling as any novelist to have emerged from the vanished world that was the Communist bloc -- Melanie McDonagh * Evening Standard * Laconic, sinister and drily funny... Miss this fatalistic, deadpan wit, well served in John Hodgsons nicely crafted translation, and you miss something essential in Kadare. -- Boyd Tonkin * Spectator * Albania's greatest living novelist has invariably explored his countrys repressive political legacy in his strange and brilliant novels... [ The Doll] can only enrich our understanding and appreciation of Kadares writing. * Daily Mail * An evocative, captivating story. Every word of this short book is there for a reason. The considered, precise language (translator John Hodgson has done a fine job) leads smoothly through various no doubt carefully selected life events with The Doll being the thread which holds it all together... Its a category-defying feat of literary engineering by a writer who is totally in control. * Bookmunch * A master storyteller * John Carey * [ A] coldly brilliant novel -- Kevin Brazil * Times Literary Supplement * A novelist of dazzling mastery * Independent * One of the world's greatest living writers
