Description
In a stone city that feels as ancient and stubborn as the mountains around it, a child narrator watches daily life unfold with bright, baffled humor—misreading adult urgency, missing the meaning behind wartime choices, and turning small details into unforgettable drama. As the story moves between childhood perception and an adult return to the same streets, the city’s people and their private myths come into focus, revealing how memory, survival, and identity are carved into place. Characters like Kako, whose refrain—“It’s the end of the world”—echoes like a personal prophecy, and others drawn into the Resistance, embody the novel’s themes of fear, endurance, and the strange comedy of human behavior under pressure. Blending nostalgia with irony and drawing on echoes of Greek myth, this lyrical, culturally rooted work showcases Kadare’s distinctive ability to make a setting feel alive while using a child’s viewpoint to illuminate the adult world without spoiling its mysteries.
Available Editions
paperback
Serpent's tail
Published Jan 1, 1987
277 pages
ISBN: 9781852420048
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Details
First Published
1973
Language
eng
Translation
From: alb
Content Warnings
No content warnings identified.