Accidentul

The book has a boring beginning, a car accident near Vienna where a couple died while the taxi driver remained alive. The local police and then the Serbian and Albanian police investigated the case that proved to be nothing more than that.

After a while, the case is reopened by a private researcher who gathers all evidences (tickets, hotel reservations, private notes, diaries, phone calls) and starts recreating the last 40 weeks of life of the dead couple.

First half of the book goes like this and I found it boring to read, because I detected the missing details intentionally left aside. Then Kadare makes a brilliant turn and opens more ways in front of the reader: the loving couple is not so loving anymore, Rovena feels being enslaved by the power of Besfort, he tries to make her free and pushes her towards another man, then comes another one just to prove her freedom.

Like a tyrant who wants the unfaithful ones to still love him and become addicted to him, Besfort sets her free to make her unfaithful. He does not have enough power to leave her, so he treats her like a call girl, then suggests a break-up and abandons her.

The story is composed like a puzzle, adding up more and more pieces that fill the empty wall - the life of Rovena and Besfort. In the same time, Besfort is involved in the political decision to bomb Yugoslavia and the accident might have been in fact a murder. No one knows exactly what happened, despite the researcher's hard work. Except maybe the reader, who can follow his/her own leads to find out.