Broken April By Ismail Kadare Book Review

The author off Broken April Ismail kadareis an Albanian writer who was known for his

honest and critical writing which got him much infamy with the government

The novel takes place ruled the country.

1930s Albania before the Second World War when the monarchy

The story takes place in the High Plateau region of Albania and centres around the life of the

mountain people.

The mountain people follow a set of strict rules and customs called ‘The Kanun’

.

‘The Kanun’ is a set of oral laws passes down among the mountain people generation to

generation. It was compiled together by a Turkish noble into 12 books and was called the

code of leke.

The code dictates every aspect of the amounts in people,s lives like marriage, hospitality,

definition of a rock cut house called kulla and how a road is supposed to be made.However

out of all these laws the most infamous one was the laws which dictated ‘The Blood Fued’

.

The Kanun dictates that a guest or a ‘man child’ of the family when murdered must be

avenged.

People are obligated to follow the law are they risk being punished for violating the laws.

If a villager violates the law the entire village must punish them. If a village violates a law

then a group of villages would punish them. If a group of villagers violated the law then the

entire ‘Banner’ ( a district ) would punish them.

Such a severe system enshures anyone who tried to Goa against ‘The Kanun’ would

severely suppressed and be made an example of. In fact many villages would be burnt down

and the corner stones of every house would be removed as symbolic act.

In the novel the protagonist Gjorg encounters several such abandoned villages in the

mountains as he travels to pay the blood tax.

The protagonists clan in the family is involved in a blood feud which has lasted several

generations ago when a traveller knocked on the door of their house to request for refuge.

As per custom the clan invited the traveller into the house as a guest and placed him under

the protection of their ‘Bessa’

.

Once the guest had stayed the night the next day they were escorted with one of the clan

members to the border of the village according to the custom.

However after bidding farewell the two people turned their backs on each other, at that

moment the traveller was shot dead.According to the rules of the guest had died within the borders of the village they were still

under the protection of the host clan’s bessa.

However a provision dictates if the escort and traveller had turned their backs on each other

they were not obliged to avenge the guest.

However as there no witnesses the elders of the village declared it was the responsibility of

the host clan to avenge the death of the traveller.

After the murderers clan was found out a blood fued began lasting multiple generations

leading to 44 deaths, 22 deaths from each clan.

This blood fued leads the present time of the novel we’re Gjorg must avenge the death of his

elder brother.

There are all kinds of small rules and customs The Kanun directs the mountain people to

fulfill.

Such as giving a warning call before firing a gun at a person or turning a murdered person’s

body over and placing a gun near their head to honour them. Additionally there is also ‘The

Trousseau’ bullet which the bride’s parents gives the groom which after marriage the

husband is obligated to use on his wife should she ever try to ‘run away’ from the household.

There is also a wide array of unique vocabulary related to the Blood Feud such as

Blood sick, Blood Tax, Tower of Refuge, Blood feudology, The Prenk and many more all

integral to the plot and characters of the story.

Additionally there is also the theme of feudalism and capitalism in the story. It talks of how

blood is turned into a commodity. For the mountain people must pay a ‘fine’ every time they

wound a person and a hefty ‘blood tax’ upon avenging their blood in the blood feud. To drive

the point across the story also talk about person who managed to provide income to his

family simply with fine money accumulated from his wounds.

It was lucrative because if one does not pay ten fine one wound would be considered the

death of half a man. If another wound were to be received the blood would be considered

avenged. Of course not many would settle for such a thing.

If one were to arrive to the High Plateau as a guest they would nothing to fear as they would

be treated a guests and protected by the bessa and elevated to the status of a god your life

and death would effect the lives of entire generations to come . However never open the pot

in the hosts house because doing so would be dishonouring the host making you the target

of the blood feud as well.

‘The Kanun’ laws have lasted through several centuries through multiple wars, occupation by

foreign powers like the Turks, Serbs etc, and political instability from the multiple regime

changes. However none were able to make a dent on the influence of The Kanun.Even today the Blood Fued still rages on in the High Plateau,s of Albania.

After the fall of the communist gov of Albania in 90s at least 10,000 people have been killed

I’m blood feud related incidents.

However even recent the code has began to erode as now even women children and

priests are targeted in Blood Feuds. This is traditionally a violation of The Kanun and

punishable by the code.

Finally from the point of the outside world especially the low lying lands of Albania and the

urban elite from the cities of Albania the High Plateau is a land of myth, a land were the laws

of death rules everyone, it was even called ‘The Constitution of Death’ something beautiful

yet tragic.

In conclusion the novel made me ask the question

“Should traditions and customs be glorified to such an extent by the elite at the expense of Innocent lives?”