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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > The Accident

The Accident

Why did the taxi crash on the autobahn in Vienna?

Who exactly were Besfort Y and Rovena, the mysterious couple who died after being flung from the back seat?

How was Besfort connected to the war in the Balkans? And why was his affair with Rovena clouded in jealousy and mistrust?

Who wanted them dead?

This is the story of the last forty weeks of their lives – a fever dream where love and obsession collide.

‘His fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny… He is a great writer, by any nation’s standards.’
Financial Times

‘A master storyteller.’
John Carey

‘One of the great writers of our time.’
Scotsman

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

Canongate, 2010
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Why did the taxi crash on the autobahn in Vienna?

Who exactly were Besfort Y and Rovena, the mysterious couple who died after being flung from the back seat?

How was Besfort connected to the war in the Balkans? And why was his affair with Rovena clouded in jealousy and mistrust?

Who wanted them dead?

This is the story of the last forty weeks of their lives – a fever dream where love and obsession collide.

‘His fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny… He is a great writer, by any nation’s standards.’
Financial Times

‘A master storyteller.’
John Carey

‘One of the great writers of our time.’
Scotsman

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