BOOKS FROM ALBANIAThe General of the Dead Army
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Male author
Description:
The General of the Dead Army is a moving and timely meditation on war and its consequences by the winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, available again in paperback. Twenty years after World War II, an Italian general—armed with maps, measurements, and dental records—is sent to Albania to recover the remains of his country’s fallen soldiers. A quarrelsome priest joins him, and in rain and sleet they dig up the Albanian countryside—once a battlefield, now a graveyard—checking teeth and dog tags, assembling a dead army in pine-box uniforms. In addition to the brutal weather, they also battle the hostility of the Albanians working for them. This may be an errand of mercy for the general, but the chance to humiliate their one-time conquerors offers the Albanians a welcome vengeance. Fighting the hopelessness of his undertaking, the general finds his movements shadowed by a German general on the same gruesome mission for his own country. In a terrible crescendo at a wedding, the Italian general must answer for the crimes of his country and all countries that have invaded this land of eagles, seeking to destroy its people. Enthralling and poignant, The General of the Dead Army is an elegy for the young people of every country who are sent abroad to die in battle.
Reviews:
(6 months ago) |
21 Mar, 2025
3.5 ⭐️ I don’t normally like to simply rehash what’s written on the back of a book, but in this case, I would like to clarify a bit of that description. It mentions the Italian General dispatched to Albania to recover the bodies of soldiers who died during World War II, once there he meets a German general who is doing the same thing. This makes it sound like the book is very much about the two of them and they’re interactions. In fact, that is a very small part of the book. It is mostly about the Italian General, and the German one is mentioned when he first casually runs into him, and at the end of the book for the last couple of chapters. This didn’t really change my opinion of the book, I just thought it seemed odd that the back cover summary made it sound like the book was really about the two of them, which it wasn’t really.
It is a very well written book which leaves you feeling sorry for all sides of of the war, which is probably the point – war is senseless, and destroys the lives of those involved directly and peripherally. And it has a lasting effect that trickles down through the years. |
