SOURCE: Elsie, Robert. Review of The Three-Arched Bridge, by Ismail Kadare. World Literature Today 71, no. 3 (summer 1997): 630.

In the following review, Elsie praises the English translation of The Three-Arched Bridge and deems the novel “one of Kadare's classic works of Balkan history and legendry, and … among his finest novels of the period.”

At long last, after many years of delay, the novel The Three-Arched Bridge has finally appeared in English. It is one of Kadare's classic works of Balkan history and legendry, and counts among his finest novels of the period. The Albanian version, Ura me tri harqe, was first published in Tirana in 1978, at about the same time as Broken April and Doruntine. The attentive reader will not fail to detect parallels and affinities with the latter two works, which have also been translated into English (see WLT 65:2, p. 343).

With The Three-Arched Bridge, Kadare returns to the mythical...