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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > A Girl In Exile

A Girl In Exile

Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. An unknown girl – Linda B. – has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession. Rudian remembers writing the dedication at the request of Linda’s friend, who has since become his mistress but has now disappeared. He soon learns that Linda’s family, considered suspect, were exiled to a small Albanian town far from the capital, and that the girl committed suicide.

But what really happened to Linda B.? Through layers of intrigue, her story gradually unfolds: how she loved Rudian from a distance, and the risks she was prepared to take so that she could get close to him.

A Girl in Exile is a stunning, deeply affecting portrait of life and love under surveillance, infused with myth, wry humour and the chilling absurdity of a paranoid regime.

Author

Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare

Books

The Traitor's Niche

A Girl In Exile

The Accident

The Siege

Isil Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokastër, in the south of Albania. His first novel, The General of the Dead Army, established him as a major new voice in literature, and translations of his novels have since been published in more than forty countries. In 2005 he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize.

Translator

John Hodgson

John Hodgson

Books

The Accident

The False Apocalypse

A Girl In Exile

The Traitor's Niche

John Hodgson was born in England in 1951 and studied English at Cambridge and Newcastle. He has taught at the universities of Prishtina and Tirana. Hodgson has written about Albania, Kosova, the British Balkan traveller Edith Durham, and the novelist John Cowper Powys. He now works as an Albanian-English translator and interpreter, and previously translated Kadare’s Three-Arched Bridge.

Published by

Harvill Secker, 2016
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Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. An unknown girl – Linda B. – has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession. Rudian remembers writing the dedication at the request of Linda’s friend, who has since become his mistress but has now disappeared. He soon learns that Linda’s family, considered suspect, were exiled to a small Albanian town far from the capital, and that the girl committed suicide.

But what really happened to Linda B.? Through layers of intrigue, her story gradually unfolds: how she loved Rudian from a distance, and the risks she was prepared to take so that she could get close to him.

A Girl in Exile is a stunning, deeply affecting portrait of life and love under surveillance, infused with myth, wry humour and the chilling absurdity of a paranoid regime.

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