A Question of Lunacy (2004) is a mini-novel that depicts the Albanian reality since the beginning of the communist regime, through the bewildered gaze of a child who is the author himself. In this somewhat autobiographical work, written with Kadare's sense of the absurd, we see both the cousin who lost his house for three days, and the grieving uncle who reached out to the revolver, and a communist party that comes out of illegality even though it has already taken a power that bans the teaching of French, Latin and Greek...
A Question of Lunacy is both an auto-ironic work and a specific parody of Kadare's previous novels. Although small in volume, the book is one of the great works of the prominent Albanian writer.
This project has been funded with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission.
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 of the human consequences of dictatorship.
Kadare's 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 inaugural Man Booker International Prize.
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