SOURCE: Elsie, Robert. Review of Dosja H., by Ismail Kadare. World Literature Today 65, no. 3 (summer 1991): 529-30.

In the following review, Elsie lauds Dosja H. as a “delightful satire” about two foreigners exploring Albanian history and culture.

In 1953 Milman Parry and Albert Lord caught the attention of the academy world with the publication of their “Serbo-Croatian heroic songs,” which demonstrated that the Homeric tradition of epic verse was still alive and well in the Balkans. Their Sandjak bard Salih Ugljanin (b. 1866) was quite capable of reciting hours of Serbo-Croatian and Albanian epic verse on heroic deeds of times past.

The origins of epic verse in the Balkans are rather mysterious and controversial. To the outside observer it is of little consequence whether the Albanian këngë kreshnikesh took their inspiration from the better-known Serbo-Croatian junačke pjesme or vice versa, but for scholars from the Balkans, many of whom...