Chronicle in stone ([New] ed.)

"Where are we going, where are they taking us?" The Second World War is about to start, but life for a young boy in a small town in Albania is still a game.

Yet, as the country falls to the Italians, then the Greeks, then eventually to the Nazis, and is mercilessly bombed by the British, the boy grows up.

Falling in love with unattainable women, seduced by witchcraft and literature, and finally evacuated to a remote village, his existence changes from 'marvellous, terrifying and extraordinary' into a primitive world where the severed arm of a British airman becomes a talisman and girls disappear - possibly murdered by their own fathers.

Forging the unexpected and terrible link between childish playfulness and a horrifying political future, Ismail Kadare has created a story with a depth and brilliance characteristic of the master story-teller.