Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

As Spring arrives in the Albanian mountain town, some strange things are emerging in the thaw. Bank robbers, unknown under the tyrannical ancient regime, strike up the National Bank. The ghastly Kanun, regulator of medieval Albania's blood vendettas, is dredged up from the shipwreck of history. And the ultraexplosive secrets of the state secrets, rumoured to be buried in the area, are threatening to flood the entire nation. As the dreamy painter Mark Gurabardhi struggles to complete a portrait of the iceberg that struck the Titanic, he finds his quiet life disturbed by ancient love and modern barbarism, by the renaissance of Brezhnev and Oedipus, and by the peculiar brutality of a country surprised and divided by its new found freedom.

About the Author

Ismail Kadare, born in 1936 in the mountain town of Gjirokaster, near the Greek border, is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. Since the appearance of The General of the Dead Army in 1965, Kadare has published scores of stories and novels that make up a panorama of Albanian history linked by a constant meditation on the nature and human consequences of dictatorship. His works brought him into frequent conflict with the authorities from 1945 to 1985. In 1990 he sought political asylum in France, and now divides his time between Paris and Tirana. He is the winner of the first ever Man Booker International Prize.