Short novella seemingly written as a sort of "fuck you" to the expat author's native country of Albania. This differs from other books I've read written by authors who lived in the former communist nations of Europe who condemn their governments and societies by having almost no empathy for the average fellow citizen/victims. This tone jumps out of the book from the first page:

"Another consequence is fearlessness, although this might be caused by our people's flattened, malformed craniums - the seat of indifference - or a simple lack of conscience."

The book is a collection of vignettes whose common theme is bleakness and bitterness. The best one in my view recounted a childhood duel with a friend using long white "swords" they found in a vase in the back of the garden of their home. Her grandmother freaks out when she sees them and makes them stop. Vorpsi writes:

"Our interrupted duel remained a mystery for years. We were already grown-ups when we learned that we'd been playing with the bones of our uncle, the one we'd never known because Mother Party had executed him when he was seventeen."

The fractured narrative probably mirrors Albania's fractured society and all, but it doesn't give the reader more than a surface understanding of these people or the country they inhabit. ( )

A "description" of the country of Albania, written in novella form. I believe it was written in the stream of consciousness manner. The author describes, from her vantage point, scenes from daily life in Albania. I found it to be really creepy in spots, such as "my father kissed me on the lips and called me his good little whore." I neither liked nor disliked this book passionately, so I'm rating it 3 stars (average), but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. 109 pages ( )

More a collection of related vignettes or stories, than a novel, The Country Where No One Ever Dies pulls together stories, some perhaps autobiographical, about a young girl/woman growing up in the 1970s in Albania under the oppressive regime of Enver Hoxha. The tales are not chronological, and the girl/young woman's age varies, and she goes by varied but similar names, including the author's name, Ornela. One tale might be from a young girl's viewpoint, another might be told about the young girl in retrospect. One might think this would be confusing, and perhaps intellectually it could be, but I found it had an artful flow - like being caught in the current of a river.

The girl tells of visiting her father in prison, of swordfighting with some very ideal "sticks" which turned out to be her uncle's bones; of stealing the family jewelry piece by piece in trade for being able to read banned books, like Grimm's Fairy Tales. It's a rough life, a rough time; with anger and long-held fears, repressed sexuality, limitations and encultured oppression... and yet, Vorpsi adds a kind of undercurrent of hope because they survive.

A couple of books came to mind as I read this book. It's hard not to think of Herta Müller, although there is no similarity in writing styles. But here are two women authors who both lived under oppressive dictatorships and expressed their experiences artfully through writing. The other book which came to mind was Adania Shibli's Touch which relates the impressions of a young girl living on the West Bank. Vorpsi has chosen to tell at least some of her story from the viewpoint of a child.

I thought for some time about why this author might have chosen to write her tale the way she did - darting back and forth in time, from different viewpoints, under different names and what came to me is that her book takes the form of remembering. When we remember, we do not remember chronologically, always with the earliest memory first; instead, our memories flit in and out in our consciousness somewhat randomly, and as we grow older we shape them a little differently each time we experience them. And so this is the way I've come to think of Vorpsi's tale.

I'm sure I am not doing this book justice (and I'm kind of rambling here). Not everyone would enjoy it, but I think it important to read for any number of reasons. ( )

Even during the height of Communism, Albania was an outlier, a dystopia seemingly little noticed by most of the world. Here was a country whose dictator, Enver Hoxha, broke ties with the Soviet Union because he believed criticizing and abandoning Stalinism was "revisionism." Having then allied the country with Red China, Hoxha broke that off when China began taking steps to reestablish diplomatic relations with the U.S., believing that to be a betrayal of Marxist-Leninist principles.

The impact of Hoxha's philosophy and policies on routine life in the country is among the subjects of Albanian-born Ornela Vorpsi's The Country Where No One Ever Dies. First published in France in 2004, some 15 years after she left Albania for Italy, it is her first work of fiction to be translated into English. More a novella than a novel, the book's structure tends to reflect the country's political and social disorder.

Translated by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck, The Country Where No One Ever Dies doesn't present a linear narrative. Rather, it is more a series of vignettes of life in 1980s Albania before the collapse of Communism. Although some narrators reappear and at least one is called Ornela, their names and ages change from chapter to chapter. Their stories reflect a society in which sex, death and repression are common themes.

Most men come off as interested in little other than fornication, "the quintessence of their existence," They lust after even young girls but if the girls don't take care of their "immaculate flower," they will be forever branded a whore. At the same time, another adage of a country is that "a good-looking girl is a whore; an ugly one -- poor thing -- is not." Some pregnant young women commit suicide by drowning themselves in a nearby lake. Abortion is illegal and the back alley abortions are often performed without anesthesia and, "a little more than occasionally,"' lead to the woman's death anyway.

There is also the injustice created by the pervasive control of the party. When one girl visits her father, a political prisoner, in prison, she notices his face looks different. It is only after returning home the next day that she understands why. "At home, when I looked in the little bag that Mother had brought back with her, I discovered teeth, real teeth, some made of gold, hollow inside. They were what had been missing from my father's face."

Another girl's father is also in prison but there's a saving grace to his situation. "He wasn't a political prisoner, though -- just a common criminal -- and so posed no danger to society." And Ornela's grandfather, who is brave enough to express his opinion about the state of things, explains to her why he no longer practices law. "I'm a defense lawyer and my profession no longer exists, thanks to the Party. The Party says that no one is ever convicted unjustly, so there's no need for a defense."

To escape the crush of totalitarian government and the seemingly inbred cultural attitudes, one girl finds refuge in books, doing whatever she can to get them. That is where she not only manages to find escape in fairy tales, but also discovers the concept of love. This is often the only glimmer of life that comes off as anything but misery.

Although exceptionally well written, the book's vignettes provide only a glimpse of the country and its people. While there is a sense that perhaps never-ending hardship makes Albanian life seem eternal and Albanians survive because they see no other choice, The Country Where No One Ever Dies never takes us much deeper. If the proposition is that Albanians never die because they are fearless and immutable, too many of the people we meet seem to contribute to the adversity more than tolerate it. Because we never really grasp the reason for resignation or tolerance, the book ultimately never becomes a cohesive whole capable of surpassing its individual parts.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

Barsk og meget gribende fortælling fra en trøstesløs opvækst i Albanien. Meget nøgternt beskrevet og derfor også meget voldsom. ( )