The Traitor’s Niche by Ismail Kadare — monstrous supremacy

The violent and corrosive nature of state repression assails you, gnaws at you and depresses you on every page. The state in question is the Ottoman Empire of the 1820s — a sprawling multilingual, multinational tyranny. At its apex is an almighty sultan-emperor having to contend with an 82-year-old Albanian pasha, Black Ali, who for decades had been a mighty power at his court — but who has decided to revolt against his sovereign.

Ismail Kadare, the great Albanian writer, wrote this magnificent short novel some 40 years ago but only now has it been translated, beautifully by John Hodgson, into English. As with much of his work Kadare scrutinises the sufferings of his nation — referred to as “that old troublemaker” or “truly a cursed country” — at the edge of things, enduring for centuries the misery inflicted by arbitrary power.

The sultan is not physically described, and only once is anything he says spelt out: “I will turn you to ash, ash, ash.” Kadare prefers instead to focus on the bureaucracy of the sultan’s repression and, more dramatically, on the ghoulish tactics he uses to ensure that his subjects, near and far, fully understand his monstrous supremacy. One particularly gruesome prop, a severed head — actually several severed heads — takes centre stage. Those that the sultan decrees are special traitors merit special treatment. Their heads are put on public display in “The Traitor’s Niche”, set in a wall in a forbidding Constantinople square: “Perhaps nowhere else could the eyes of passers-by so easily grasp the interdependency between the imposing solidity of the ancient square and the human heads that had dared to show it disrespect.” There are elaborate rules and rituals to ensure the heads are properly transported, preserved and displayed — involving ice, salt and honey — all handily written down in “Regulations for the Care of Heads”.

The royal courier whose job it is to bring the heads back to Constantinople stops en route to display them to villagers — for a fee. In scenes that are heart-rending and pathetic Kadare describes how the crowds gather, mutely, and pay up despite their poverty. They are dazzled, belittled and cowed: “The spectators felt drawn closer to the frontier of death, almost touching it. In a few moments the crowd and death would congeal in a waxen, translucent unity.”

Yet none of this is enough for the sultan to be sure of Albanian subservience. The memory of a successful rebellion 400 years earlier, led by the heroic Scanderbeg, haunts not only the aged Black Ali, who lacks any similar legitimacy, but the sultan too. Black Ali’s people ignore him — even his 22-year-old wife is baffled by his newly found nationalist credentials — and he is defeated.

Even so, Albania must be stripped of its national identity — a task led by the “Director of Caw-caw” or “The Big Raven”. The very idea of rebellion has to be erased, indigenous wedding rites distorted and the Albanian language reduced to “Nonspeak”. In a passage to set alongside Orwell, Kadare catalogues the way a language can be eliminated — “the ruin of grammar, the withering of particles, especially prefixes, and the coarsening of syntax” — until the language thickens, stutters and dies, all supervised by a team in Constantinople.

As in all the worst authoritarian regimes, nobody is safe. Kadare penetrates the fear and insecurity of his characters, who are never able to achieve any physical or psychological peace, whether in victory or defeat, or when chaperoning a severed head around the empire, or presiding over a head’s display in the capital. They can’t sleep, they have bad dreams, or the heads intoxicate them — and all the while they struggle to find their own will and self-respect.

This is a mesmerising story filled with rapidly drawn, memorable characters and vivid descriptions of architecture and desolate landscapes. It is a fable while also a portrait of subjugation. Kadare, however, will not have all traces of spirit defeated, whether individual or collective. Albania will not be undone.

The Traitor’s Niche, by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson, Harvill Secker, RRP£16.99, 208 pages

Mark Damazer is Master of St Peter’s College, Oxford