The Three-Arched Bridge

I went to Albania last year, and have read a number of Ismail Kadare's books, this being the latest one. I thought the story very interesting, with obvious parallels to more recent political situations. I assume it was written in French, and the translation is very well done.

Kadare's reputation as Albania's greatest export might at first sight seem a slight, faint praise for a big fish in a small pool, but the fact that we know of him at all serves to remind us that things might not be as they seem.Translation might throw a diffusing veil over much of the author's original nuance, but John Hodgson has produced a version of persuasive texture, with natural rhythm, and an authentic aroma.The premise of the story is remarkably simple, as ancient ferrymen are put out of business by bridge builders. Set in the context of a superstitious and powerless community, the ramifications are severe, and there is always tell of far more terrible changes just over the horizon, as the tide of a foreign empire oozes closer.I often find the most rewarding books are slight, quick reads, as is this one. It will continue to reward at further sittings.

This is one of the most sublime reads I have had in an awfully long time. Within this gentle feeling of being lifted away to some other country, some other century, this short novel also manages to be one of the most harrowing reads I have ever experienced. The effect is achieved by the subtlety of Hodgson's evocative and sparse translation, conveying the full horror of the situation the book descibes.The legend of the three brothers, who immured one of their wives in a constantly sabotaged wall, is brought to a horrible reality as the company constructing the new bridge offer substantial renumeration to those that would sacrifice themselves for the sake of progress. Set in the late 14th Century, the book echoes down the corridors of time, realising several modern day parallels which are frankly enough to frighten one into putting the book down. Yet I urge you not to; this is an important landmark in world literature, and one of the best novels I have read in a very long time. You will not be disappointed.

Not as rich as the 2 later parts of the trilogy, The palace of Dreams and The Niche, but an essential insight into Kadare's vision of Turkish conquest, Europe divided between Christian and Muslim and his central theme, tyranny. Here the tyranny is for the future, a matter of premonition. It is symbolised by the immuration of a man in a bridge dividing the 2 cultures and opening the way for one to conquer the other for centuries. No-one writes more powerfully or beautifully about how the acts of the powerful are felt and understood by the weak.

The Three-Arched Bridge is yet another masterpiece from the the great Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Drawing heavily from the Serbian legend of a the sacrifice of a young wife-and-mother Rozafa, partly motivated by great patriotic fervor and partly manipulated by two deceitful brothers-in-law who duped her unsuspecting husband into the act , the novel tells of another immurement and its mysterious motives in the background of 14th century Albania. Narrated by Gjon Ukcama, the Albanian monk, the novel takes us into the hotbed of political tensions and intrigues on the eve of the Ottoman invasion in the wake of the crumbling Byzantine empire. The decision to build a bridge over Ujane e Keqe would result in wide-spread conflicts from various corners like the Boats and Rafts, the company that enjoys the monopoly in ferrying across the river, and the natives steeped in superstitions who believed that any such 'outrage' against the spirits of the waters would incite their wrath. Yet since the Count also supports the bridge-people, the construction begins. But what is constructed during the day gets destroyed during the night quite mysteriously. Who is responsible? The Boats and Rafts people? The water-spirits? Anyone else? It is at this time the old epic once again begins to make rounds. And the 'heroic tale' becomes terrifying reality when a mason named Murrash Zenebisha is immured into the wall of the bridge in a grotesque manner, obviously with the consent of the Count as well: “If it is true ...that ..enemies have hit upon the idea of destroying the bridge with the help of a myth, then you should devise some way of punishing the culprits in kind....”The terrifying image haunts the rest of the novel completely. Reports of how the Emporer brutalized his Bulgarian soldiers and other atrocities pouring in would confirm one thing: that the sacrifice of Murrash Zenebisha is not going to be the last. Within a few years Ottoman conquest would become reality. It was in 1398, just a few years after the bridge built on blood was completed, that the Kosovo massacres occurred. Coming to contemporary reality, Enver Hoxa's Stalinist regime, the Soviet supremacy and the Balkan conflicts that raged during the last decades of the twentieth century could be seen mirrored as strong undercurrents in the novel, as elsewhere in Kadare.

Narrated in the first-person by a monk named Gjon, THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE is an allegorical tale about the building of a bridge across a river, the Ujana e Keque ("Wicked Waters"), in 1377 in Albania (sometimes called Arberia in the novel). The central event in Gjon's tale is the immurement of a local young man, Murrash Zenebisha, in the structure of the bridge. Late-medieval Arberia is a region in which legends, ballads, imprecations, and betrayals proliferate, and in a twist on one of the most revered legends, Murrash Zenebisha is sacrificed (voluntarily?, or is he murdered?) and his body incorporated into the bridge, and then plastered over so that his white face stares out at the world, in order to save the bridge from mysterious forces that are working to bring it down. Not long after it is finished, the bridge becomes the site of bloodshed, in the first local skirmish with marauding Turks.The three-arched bridge was a radically new development in Arberia. It was built to supplant a ferry enterprise, to the wonder and consternation of many. But, as with other changes in this feudal world that seem so momentous at first, most people eventually adapted to the bridge. There is one looming development, however, about which the monk Gjon cannot be sanguine or philosophic: the encroachment of the Turks (the Ottoman empire) upon the Balkans. "I saw Ottoman hordes flattening the world and creating in its place the land of Islam. * * * And our music, and dances, and costume, and our majestic language, harried by that terrible '-luk,' like a reptile's tail * * *. And above all I saw the long night coming in hours, for centuries." (Historically, the Battle of Kosovo, after which most of the Balkan peninsula became vassal states to the Ottomans, occurred in 1389, twelve years after the time of Gjon's tale.)At the beginning of the novel, Gjon explains why he is setting down his narrative: "To stop them spreading truths and untruths about this bridge in the eleven languages of the peninsula, I will attempt to write the whole truth about it: in other words, to record the lie we saw and the truth we did not see * * *." At the end, however, it still is not clear what was lie and what was truth. THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE is densely layered and multi-faceted in potential interpretatons and meanings, in addition to the basic one that it is a portrayal of late-medieval Albania. (Is it also some sort of comment on Enver Hoxha's totalitarian regime in Albania, which was near its height at the time of the novel's publication?)What truly distinguishes THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE is the writing -- straightforward and spare, yet colorful, imbued with magic, and compelling. Published in 1978, it is much more accomplished than "The General of the Dead Army" (published in 1963), the best-known of Kadare's novels and the only other one that I have read. This is a splendid novel.

It is the Spring of 1378 and change is a foot in the Balkan Peninsula. The Byzantine Empire is in steady decline and the Ottoman Turks are surging. Christendom is devided and unable to check the Ottoman's steady advance. Meanwhile in an Albanian backwater, outsiders have come to build a bridge across a strategically important river.On the surface, "The Three Arched Bridge" is the story of the conflict surrounding the building of a stone bridge. However, this is a novel produced during the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Like any well written Eastern European novel of the period, there is a deeper meaning interwoven into the threads of the text. The pleasure of this novel is teasing out the allegory that Kadare has so skillfully placed into his novel.Ismail Kadare is a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature and he is also the innaugural winner of the Man Booker International Prize. "The Three Arched Bridge" is literature at its very best. Although I have some knowledge of Balkan history, this book would have been more enjoyable if my understanding of the region had been more profound.

A good historical book. I enjoyed very much. It is easy to read, has a good pace, and it is entertaining.

This novel truly takes you back in time. Kadare does a masterful job in emerging the reader in a time period that is long gone. You feel enthralled by the story yet thankful you live in the modern days. What does one do when a powerful empire approches? You basically rely on your faith, which is what the monk did. I enjoyed this book.