num_pages: 208
description: In this autobiographical novel Albanias most renowned novelist and poet Ismail Kadare explores his relationship with his mother in a delicately wrought tale of home family creative aspirations and personal and political freedom.Houses like ours seemed constructed with the specific purpose of preserving coldness and misunderstanding for as long as possible.In his fathers great stone house with hidden rooms and even a dungeon Ismail grows up with his mother at the center of his universe. Fragile as a paper doll she finds herself at odds with her tight-lipped and wise mother-in-law who as is the custom for women of a certain age will never again step foot over the threshold to leave her home. Young Ismail finds it difficult to understand his mothers tears though he can understand her boredom. She told him the reason herself in a phrase that terrified and obsessed the boy: The house is eating me up!As Ismail explores his world his mother becomes fearful of her intellectual sonhe uses words she does not understand writes radical poetry falls in love far too easily and seems to renounce everything she believes in. He will she fears have to exchange her for some other superior mother when he becomes a famous writer.The Doll is a delicate and disarming autobiographical novel an exploration of Kadares creative aspirations and their tangled connections to his childhood home and his mothers tenuous place within it.
language: English
title: The Doll
publisher: Counterpoint