...the novel transports the reader across all parts of the empire, from the center of power to the tempestuous periphery ... The novel relentlessly exposes the impact of authoritarianism, showing how it crushes the human spirit ... Yet the story is also a more encompassing parable of authoritarianism that is relevant far beyond its immediate historical moment ... In The Traitor’s Niche, as in all his best works, Kadare powerfully evokes — and critiques — the sheer, irascible strangeness of unchecked power.
The event that informs the novel is the rebellion of Ali Pasha, the Albanian governor who tried to break away from the Ottoman Empire and was killed by the Sultan’s forces in 1822. The focus is not on the uprising so much as its grisly souvenir: Ali Pasha’s severed head, which is preserved in ice, transported to an appointed plaza in Constantinople and displayed as a warning to would-be insurgents ... The book’s political intentions are shrewd and unmistakable. By depicting the corruption and whimsical cruelty of the Ottoman Empire...but it would be wrong to think of this novel as an Orwellian political allegory.
As this riveting novel unfolds—in brilliant, laconic, grimly comic fashion—it becomes apparent that the state is, in its own way, a frightful head. A Medusa, perhaps, with the capacity to destroy. Or, as the courier imagines, an octopus, the only creature he can think of whose head is in the middle of its body. The fleeting thoughts and impulses of Kadare’s characters flutter uselessly around the hard, indelible fact of the state: of its organs and deliberations ... In Kadare’s Istanbul there are newspaper headlines and tourists, a royal theater, couriers traveling by carriage, who don’t belong to the historical period. Are they anachronisms or elements of the surreal or slyly placed hooks that tether the narrative to another period, perhaps our own?
The violent and corrosive nature of state repression assails you, gnaws at you and depresses you on every page. The state in question is the Ottoman Empire of the 1820s — a sprawling multilingual, multinational tyranny ... a severed head — actually several severed heads — takes centre stage. Those that the sultan decrees are special traitors merit special treatment. Their heads are put on public display in The Traitor’s Niche, set in a wall in a forbidding Constantinople square: 'Perhaps nowhere else could the eyes of passers-by so easily grasp the interdependency between the imposing solidity of the ancient square and the human heads that had dared to show it disrespect.' ... It is a fable while also a portrait of subjugation. Kadare, however, will not have all traces of spirit defeated, whether individual or collective. Albania will not be undone.
The book opens at the heart of the Ottoman Empire. We are in a square in the ancient Imperial capital; and in this square, in the stonework of the Cannon Gate, has been carved a niche. In this niche is a severed head ... The book revolves around the inhabitants of the niche—the current, historical, and potential occupants, plus Abdullah and the Doctor, the civil servants charged with maintaining the integrity of the grisly relics, and the corrupt courier whose job it is to speed newly decapitated heads to their care.
After Ali Tepelena (the governor of Ottoman) is executed, his head is entrusted to courier Tunj Hata, who is charged with bringing it to the Traitor’s Niche. On the way, Hata has surreal adventures while earning a little extra money by displaying the head at the small villages between Albania and his destination at the heart of the empire ... Once Hata’s quest is completed, Kadare turns his attention to those whose cultures face extinction under the law, cutting between Hata, Abdullah, the late Ali in his final hours, and Ali’s wife Vasiliqia. In so doing, Kadare brilliantly examines the private cost of despotism while illustrating a crucial episode in the history of Albania. Kadare’s powerful, nimble novel is a gem.
One of a series of books by Albania’s premier novelist ... A political fable of decapitation amid totalitarian oppression combines wickedly funny satire with darker, deeper lessons ... The only signs that it's set in the early 19th century are offhand references to Byron and Napoleon; otherwise it reads less like historical fiction than timeless prophecy, as it anticipates the relentless expansion of an empire 'encompassing three continents, twenty-nine peoples, six religions, four races, and forty languages/ ... Kadare's political impact and significance have made him an oft-mentioned candidate in Nobel Prize handicapping.
