Book cover for The Three-Arched Bridge: A Novel by Ismail Kadare

The Three-Arched Bridge

A Novel

2012 Released
192 Pages
2-3 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
ArcadeISBN 9781611459906
Translated by John Hodgson

In the Balkan Peninsula, history’s long-disputed bridge between Asia and Europe, the receding Byzantine empire has left behind a patchwork of warring peoples who fight over everything, from their pastures of sheep to the authorship of their countless legends.

One such gruesome tale declares that a castle under construction cannot be finished until a young mason’s bride has been walled up alive, one breast left exposed to suckle her growing infant even after her death. Myth becomes perverse reality when a mason is plastered into a bridge over a strategically important river, where his will not be the last human sacrifice.

Ismail Kadare

Born in 1936, Ismail Kadare was Albania's best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize for 'a body of work written by an author who has had a truly global impact'. He is the recipient of the highly prestigious 2009 Principe de Asturias de las Letras in Spain. He died in 2024, aged 88.

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