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(More customer reviews)As something of an amateur Albanologist, I had perused the latest English-language translations of contemporary Albanian and Kosovar literature and was happy to come upon Bashkim Hoxha's novella. Although rather short, it has enough material in it to fill a couple of university literature seminars. Hoxha, a well-known writer and filmmaker in Durres, Albania, writes in a simple, almost poetic style, that stays with the reader long after he/she is done reading.
Hoxha's novel is a both a tragic love story and an allegory for the troubled, violent history of the Balkans. Set in a resort hotel and a neighborhing villa in the years after the Balkan Wars (Bosnia and Kosova), Hoxha's main characters all are hiding from the tragedies they either inflicted or inflicted on others during the war.
For all the violence suffered by the Albanians in the 1990s by the neo-fascist Serbian militias, Hoxha's is suprisingly not bitter. He is more sad. Indeed, sadness permeates "The Balkan Hotel" - sadness that the Balkans is such that it is; namely, a battlefield of nationalists. That said, Hoxha resolutely condemns the Serbian side for its violence throughout the 1990s. There are several graphic depictions of rape and castration inflicted by Serbian forces.
Hoxha has succeeded in developing characters of both Serbian and Albanian origin who are "trapped" in their respective histories. With the tragic ending of the novel, one certainly does not see a great hope for ethnic reconciliation, at least any point in the future. I would highly recommend this novella to students of Balkan history and literature. I would also recommend those readers interested in contemporary Albanian literature to take a look at this interesting, if not controversial, portrayal of the Balkan Wars and the historical enmity between Albanians and Serbs.
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Alone we are born...Alone we die...Why, then, do we want to interfere with each other's lives?The bestselling Albanian novel, The Balkan Hotel, portrays two lives and two hearts with no hope for a common future as they are torn apart by the ghost of their past and by senseless, centuries-old ethnic hatred.
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