In this autobiographical novel, Albania's most renowned novelist and
poet Ismail Kadare explores his relationship with his mother in a
delicately wrought tale of home, family, creative aspirations, and
personal and political freedom.
"Houses like ours seemed constructed with the specific purpose of
preserving coldness and misunderstanding for as long as possible."
In his father's great stone house with hidden rooms and even a dungeon,
Ismail grows up with his mother at the center of his universe. Fragile
as a paper doll, she finds herself at odds with her tight-lipped and
wise mother-in-law who, as is the custom for women of a certain age,
will never again step foot over the threshold to leave her home. Young
Ismail finds it difficult to understand his mother's tears, though he
can understand her boredom. She told him the reason herself in a phrase
that terrified and obsessed the boy: "The house is eating me up!"
As Ismail explores his world, his mother becomes fearful of her
intellectual son--he uses words she does not understand, writes radical
poetry, falls in love far too easily, and seems to renounce everything
she believes in. He will, she fears, have to exchange her for some other
superior mother when he becomes a famous writer.
The Doll is a delicate and disarming autobiographical novel, an
exploration of Kadare's creative aspirations and their tangled
connections to his childhood home and his mother's tenuous place within
it.
