The Pyramid

Born in 1936, Ismail Kadare is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005 he was awarded the first Man Booker International Prize for 'a body of work written by an author who has had a truly global impact'. He is the recipient of the highly prestigious 2009 Principe de Asturias de las Lettras in Spain.
The Pyramid is a 1992 novel written by Ismail Kadare. It is considered to serve both literary and dissident purposes. It is a political allegory of absolute political power.
The first part of the novel was written in 1988-1990 but was rejected by the state publisher. It was serialized in January 1991 in several issues of the new opposition newspaper Democratic Renaissance. After the establishment of pluralism and democracy in Albania, it was completed and published in Tirana and Paris
The Pyramid is a political allegory set in ancient Egypt. It is the tale of the conception and construction of the Cheops pyramid but also of absolute political power.
"For the pyramid, viewed by his subjects as an abiding symbol of his total and incontestable power, comes to be seen by him as a personal memento mori, a constant and paralyzing reminder that his brief life will give way to an eternal entombment in stone." -The New York Times
In 1993, the novel was awarded the Prix Méditerranée Étranger in France.Ismail Kadare, who has died aged 88, July 1st, 2024, was the best known Albanian writer of his own generation and all others, and one of the most remarkable European novelists of our age. He leaves a body of work as immense as Balzac’s Human Comedy, as unrelenting in its critique of dictatorship as Orwell’s, and as disturbing as that of Kafka.
Kadare’s 80-plus novels, stories, poetry collections and essays constitute a national monument, an invention as well as a reflection of what it means to be Albanian, an exploration of both the ugliness and the dignity of an ancient and oppressed nation…