SOURCE: Hibbard, Allen. Review of The Three-Arched Bridge, by Ismail Kadare. Review of Contemporary Fiction 17, no. 3 (fall 1997): 242.

In the following review, Hibbard finds parallels between The Three-Arched Bridge and Julien Gracq's The Opposing Shore.

The narrator of The Three-Arched Bridge, a monk by the name of Gjon, begins his story by writing that he will attempt to tell the “whole truth” and in so doing “record the lie we saw and the truth we did not see.” He proceeds to say, “I write this in haste, because times are troubled, and the future looks blacker than ever before.” That threatening dark force is the Ottoman Empire, poised to use Arberia (Albania) as a bridge for their advance into Europe. This tale by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare (titles already available in English include The Concert, The General of the Dead Army, The Pyramid, and The Palace of Dreams) is...