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The General of the Dead Army (novel)

The General of the Dead Army AuthorIsmail KadareOriginal titleGjenerali i Ushtris� s� vdekurTranslatorDerek ColtmanCountryAlbaniaLanguageAlbanianGenreHistoryPublisherSh.B. Naim Frash�riW. H. Allen19631971Pages264ISBN9780099518266
The General of the Dead Army (Albanian: Gjenerali i ushtris� s� vdekur) is a 1963 novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. It is the author's most critically acclaimed novel. Kadare was encouraged to write the book by Drago Siliqi, literary critic and director of the state-owned publishing house Naim Frash�ri.

The English translation by Derek Coltman, first published by W. H. Allen, was made not directly from the Albanian, but from the 1970 French edition published by Albin Michel. A revised English edition was published by The Harvill Press in 2000, in light of the revised French edition published by Fayard in 1998, and was reprinted by Vintage Press in 2008.

Plot
In the early 1960s, nearly 20 years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general, accompanied by a priest who is also an Italian army colonel, is sent to Albania to locate and collect the remains of his countrymen who had died during the war and return them for burial in Italy. As they organise digs and disinterment, they wonder at the scale of their task. The general talks to the priest about the futility of war and the meaninglessness of the enterprise. As they go deeper into the Albanian countryside they find they are being followed by another general who is looking for the bodies of German soldiers killed in World War II. Like his Italian counterpart, the German struggles with a thankless job looking for remains to take back home for burial, and questions the value of such gestures of national face value.

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