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The year: 1377. The place: the Balkan peninsula. Here in Ismail Kadare's novel, The Three-Arched Bridge, an Albanian monk chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a great river known as Ujana e Keqe, or "Wicked Waters." If successful in their endeavor, the bridge-builders will challenge a monopoly on water transportation known simply as "Boats and Rafts." The story itself parallels developments in modern-day Eastern Europe, with the bridge emblematic of a disintegrating economic and political order: just as mysterious cracks in the span's masonry endanger the structure and cast the local community into a morass of uncertainty, superstition, and murder, so the fast-changing conditions in the 14th-century Balkan peninsula threaten to overwhelm the stability of life there.
Dark as the story itself is, Mr. Kadare's prose, skillfully translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson, is elegant, witty, and deft. And with so many twists and turns in its carefully constructed plot, this political parable keeps the reader's interest to the very end.
From Publishers Weekly
Set in 14th-century Albania, this elliptical novel chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge to illustrate the bitter history of cultural enmity in the Balkans. The book is presented as the account of a monk named Gjon, who serves the local count as a translator. Gjon is privy to much counsel and negotiations about the Ottomans (who, he feels, will turn the clock backward a thousand years on Europe) and the decision to construct the bridge. Like everything else in the novel, the bridge is shrouded in myth: one day, an epileptic has a fit by the banks of the Ujana River, and a passing fortune-teller declares his spasm "a sign from the Almighty that a bridge should be built here, over these waters." The construction, however, is plagued by repeated sabotage. Some blame water naiads, but the bridge-builders suspect more earthly saboteurs. One of the bridge-builders befriends Gjon and elicits from him a legend told in the region about three brothers building a wall that collapsed every night until an immurement?a human sacrifice placed within the construction?was offered to it. Creepily, this legend, disseminated through a popular ballad, provides cover for the bridge-builders when they find a suitable sacrifice for immurement. Albanian author Kadare (The Pyramid) is a terrific writer, and the fine translation does justice to his gift for ominous parable (the tale disturbingly echoes recent Balkan history, particularly the way legends can be appropriated by those willing to foment political violence). But there is something unsatisfying about the predictability of the final conflagration, which finally connects the bridge with the Ottoman threat.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
