The File on H

• Book: The File on H
• Location: Albania
• Author: Ismail Kadare

In this outwardly simple tale, acclaimed Albanian author Ismail Kadare mixes satire and scholarship and offers a glimpse into 1930s provincial life in an Albania ruled over by the despotic King Zog. Written in Tirana in 1981 when Albania was being ruled by the equally repressive regime of Enver Hoxha, the parallels were too close for comfort and by the end of the 1980s Kadare had fled to France.
Two Irish-American scholars from Harvard, Bill Ross and Max Norton, arrive in Albania to study the tradition of oral epic poetry. Armed with the newly-invented tape-recorder, they hope to record the last genuine rhapsodes, itinerant singers who recite the epics at weddings and funerals and other such events, to the accompaniment of a single-stringed instrument called the lahuta. By comparing different versions of the epics, they hope to discover how such poems are preserved and passed on through the ages. The answers, they hope, will shed light on the question of whether Homer (the H of the title) was the single author many assume him to be, or whether his was simply the name given to a collective.
Suspected of being spies, the two are closely monitored by the somewhat bemused Governor’s agents, as they set up their base in a remote inn at the crossroads of two major highways where they can expect to meet some of the last remaining rhapsodes. All goes well at first. The rhapsodes are willing to cooperate and Ross and Norton start to collect their recordings. However, this is the Balkans, and they cannot escape local politics. Matters do not proceed quite as they wish.
Based on a similar real-life expedition made by Milman Parry and Albert Lord in Bosnia, this short novel is an engaging and sometimes though-provoking examination into the complexities of recording a dying oral culture, and at the same time a gentle look at the dreariness and ennui of provincial life. However, the characters are never fully-fledged and often seem to be little more than caricatures. The scholarship, and the insights into Homer’s authorship, is interesting, but the mix of serious scholarship and satire doesn’t completely come off, and I was left at the end feeling that I’d learnt quite a lot but hadn’t developed any sort of connection with the protagonists. Nor does it feel particularly “Albanian” – I felt it could have been set in any small relatively backward country. Nevertheless, I tentatively recommend it, if only because there are so few Albanian authors to choose from, and it is at least an introduction to Kadare’s work.

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