SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Roots.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (15 February 1998): 2.

In the following review, Eder maintains that The File on H. functions as a “Balkan farce,” noting that the work is unusually absurd in comparison to Kadare's previous works.

Two archeologists equipped with a cumbersome tape recorder arrive in a northern Albanian province in the 1930s. They have come to capture the recitations of the last few mountain bards, heirs of an oral epic tradition going back to Homer.

Their project sets off a series of paranoid janglings and clownish cross-purposes in a society as isolated then as it has been virtually ever since.

The Albanian legation in Washington advises the interior minister that the two men could be spies. The minister advises the provincial governor that they almost certainly are spies. He plans to win King Zog's favor by blackmailing them into writing the royal biography, something...