SOURCE: Elsie, Robert. Review of Spiritus: roman me kaos, zblesë dhe çmërs, by Ismail Kadare. World Literature Today 71, no. 4 (autumn 1997): 841-42.

In the following review, Elsie offers a stylistic and thematic overview of Spiritus: roman me kaos, zblesë dhe çmërs.

It has been almost a decade since Ismail Kadare left his homeland to settle in Paris, and these last years have been decisive in enabling him to reach full maturity as a creative and entertaining writer. He was recently elected to a seat in the venerable Académie Française in recognition of his achievements. Kadare's latest novel, Spiritus, published simultaneously in Albanian and French, is an imaginative and solidly constructed work of fiction offering both the many traditional techniques which readers have come to enjoy and expect, and a few novel aspects in evolution.

The plot, which crystallizes slowly out of a progression from “chaos...