A Dictator Calls
Ismail Kadare’s A Dictator Calls is an electrifying account of a particular point in history that is disputed.
In 1934, Joseph Stalin apparently telephoned acclaimed poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of another Soviet writer, Osip Mandelstam. Kadare beautifully constructs the conversation held on the phone between the Soviet leader and the poet in various versions throughout his book, which emphasises the importance of how one witness account, or another’s, can change the whole way the conversation was depicted in history.
The author uses perfectly chosen language to describe each version of the disputed phone call, which the translator also catches and conveys to an English-speaking reader. He also manipulates each person he presents in this whole situation to his advantage, and the way he wants to tell this particular time period in history where everything was turbulent. In each section, we are treated to little titbits of political history and the relationships between tyrants and poets, a powerful dynamic that has been going on for millennia.
I would thoroughly recommend this book; it crosses centuries in one moment and plays with words to such an extent that they end up singing.
