SOURCE: Malcolm, Noel. “In the Palace of Nightmares.” New York Review of Books 44, no. 17 (6 November 1997): 21-4.

In the following review, Malcolm traces Kadare's literary development, commenting that The Three-Arched Bridge “offers a concentrated example of the Kadarean style and mood.”

The Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare once observed that every writer has two ages, two chronologies. First there is the author's biological age; then there is his or her reputation, which is born at a different date and lives on another timescale. Kadare himself was born in 1936. His international reputation came into the world in 1970, with the French translation of his first major novel, The General of the Dead Army. From the late 1970s it grew rapidly, under the loving care of a new French foster parent, the Parisian publishing house of Fayard; by its mid-teens, Ismail Kadare's reputation was strong enough to support frequent calls—as yet unheeded...