A Girl in Exile Requiem for Linda B

<b>A <i>New York Times Book Review</i> Editors’ Choice<br><br><br><br>“Erotic, paranoiac and lightly fantastical.” —<i>The Wall Street Journal</i><br><br><br><br>“Ismail Kadare's readers are astonished every year when the Nobel committee overlooks him. . . . <i>A Girl in Exile</i>, published in Albanian in 2009, may rekindle the worldwide hopes.” —<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br><br><br><br>During the bureaucratic machinery of Albania’s 1945–1991 dictatorship, playwright Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. A girl—Linda B.—has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession.<br><br><br><br>He soon learns that Linda’s family, considered suspect, was exiled to a small town far from the capital. Under the influence of a paranoid regime, Rudian finds himself swept along on a surreal quest to discover what really happened to Linda B.<br><br><br><br><b>“At a time when parts of the world are indulging nostalgia for communism, Kadare’s novel confronts the infuriating impossibility of art in an autocratic, anti–individualist system.” —<i>The Washington Post</i><br><br><br><br>“<i>A Girl in Exile</i> confirms Kadare to be the best writer at work today who remembers—almost aggressively so, refusing to forget—European totalitarianism.” —<i>The New Republic</i></b>