TEHRAN – A new Persian translation of Albanian writer Ismail Kadare’s 1963 novel “The General of the Dead Army” has been published by Ofoq.

Mahmud Gudarzi is the translator of the book, which is the author’s most critically acclaimed novel.

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 organize digs and disinterment, they ponder 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 saving national face.

An English translation by Derek Coltman, first published by W. H. Allen, was not made 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.

A Persian translation of the novel by Majid Hatam was published by the Fekr-e Ruz publishing house in 1994.

Photo: Front cover of the new Persian translation of Ismail Kadare’s novel “The General of the Dead Army”.

MMS/YAW