The year: 1377. The place: the Balkan peninsula. Here in Ismail Kadare's novel, The Three-Arched Bridge, an Albanian monk chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a great river known as Ujana e Keqe, or "Wicked Waters." If successful in their endeavor, the bridge-builders will challenge a monopoly on water transportation known simply as "Boats and Rafts." The story itself parallels developments in modern-day Eastern Europe, with the bridge emblematic of a disintegrating economic and political order: just as mysterious cracks in the span's masonry endanger the structure and cast the local community into a morass of uncertainty, superstition, and murder, so the fast-changing conditions in the 14th-century Balkan peninsula threaten to overwhelm the stability of life there. Dark as the story itself is, Mr. Kadare's prose, skillfully translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson, is elegant, witty, and deft. And with so many twists and turns in its carefully constructed plot, this political parable keeps the reader's interest to the very end.

From Publishers Weekly
Set in 14th-century Albania, this elliptical novel chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge to illustrate the bitter history of cultural enmity in the Balkans. The book is presented as the account of a monk named Gjon, who serves the local count as a translator. Gjon is privy to much counsel and negotiations about the Ottomans (who, he feels, will turn the clock backward a thousand years on Europe) and the decision to construct the bridge. Like everything else in the novel, the bridge is shrouded in myth: one day, an epileptic has a fit by the banks of the Ujana River, and a passing fortune-teller declares his spasm "a sign from the Almighty that a bridge should be built here, over these waters." The construction, however, is plagued by repeated sabotage. Some blame water naiads, but the bridge-builders suspect more earthly saboteurs. One of the bridge-builders befriends Gjon and elicits from him a legend told in the region about three brothers building a wall that collapsed every night until an immurement?a human sacrifice placed within the construction?was offered to it. Creepily, this legend, disseminated through a popular ballad, provides cover for the bridge-builders when they find a suitable sacrifice for immurement. Albanian author Kadare (The Pyramid) is a terrific writer, and the fine translation does justice to his gift for ominous parable (the tale disturbingly echoes recent Balkan history, particularly the way legends can be appropriated by those willing to foment political violence). But there is something unsatisfying about the predictability of the final conflagration, which finally connects the bridge with the Ottoman threat. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Patrick McGrath
The novel is a reflection on the complex interactions of myth, cash and power in a time of political divisiveness and instability. It is at the same time an utterly captivating yarn: strange, vivid, ominous, macabre and wise.

From Booklist
The Balkans in the fourteenth century are on the edge of Europe, nestled against the Ottoman Empire and peopled by a collection of Croats, Slavs, and Greeks. Our narrator, an engaging monk, is a renowned polyglot who serves as translator between these diverse cultures. He tells the story of the construction of the three-arched stone bridge, an engineering marvel built to span the local river. The building of the bridge excites hostility in the local population, especially the "Boats and Rafts" men who earn their livelihood ferrying people across the river. Construction of the bridge is repeatedly sabotaged, nearly destroying it. Finally, in an eerie incident that mirrors a traditional folk story, a workman is entombed in the bridge, a sacrifice to ensure the bridge's completion, which ultimately allows for even greater carnage in the nation. Written in direct prose and brief chapters and translated into lucid English, this is another compelling investigation into language and myth, politics and power, by the renowned, infinitely talented Albanian novelist, also the author of The Pyramid. Brian Kenney

From Kirkus Reviews
A spare and haunting story of how a bridge becomes both a unifying and divisive force, by the great Albanian author (The Pyramid, p. 332; The Concert, 1994, etc.) who has been frequently nominated for the Nobel Prize. Originally written in 197678, and published in French in 1993, this is the first-person narrative of Gjon, a monk who serves a small Balkan village during the later years of the 14th century (in a country then known as Arberia). When a madman's prophecy encourages the building of a stone bridge across the nearby river, conservative voices lament the passing of old ways, local boat- and raft-men scheme to subvert the project, and furtive damage to the structure's foundation provokes the following sentiment: ``The bridge was built during the day and destroyed at night by the spirits of the water. It demanded a sacrifice.'' A villager suspected of sabotaging the bridge becomes that sacrifice and is walled up inside one of its arches--in a sequence recounted by Kadare with virtually Homeric restraint and power. The bridge is completed, and the resulting ``miracle in stone'' becomes, as Gjon reluctantly understands, his countrymen's ``bridge'' to forced assimilation with the encroaching Ottoman Empire, whose soldiers are among the first who dare cross it. This gripping parable closely resembles the indigenous legends and ballads that its narrator repeatedly invokes (including the story of a girl returned to her village by her dead brother that Kadare retold in his novel Doruntine (1988) and resembles also, by design, Bosnian author Ivo Andric's great novel The Bridge on the Drina (1977). In fact, Kadare's story stands to Andric's approximately as William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness does to The Sound and the Fury, or Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits to One Hundred Years of Solitude: both homage and partial imitation. Shakespeare and Chaucer would have understood. Imitation or not, this is a masterpiece. The Nobel can't come a moment too soon. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
In 1377, the Balkan peninsula is a bridge between cultures. On one side lies the flotsam of the receding Byzantine empire, an unruly alliance whose peoples quarrel in half a dozen tongues; on the other, the encroaching hordes of Ottoman Turkey. On the banks of a river somewhere in between these powers, another bridge is rising. And in telling its story, Albania's greatest living writer creates what is at once a magnificently realized historical novel and a chilling parable of the new barbarism that has swept the Balkans.When mysterious acts of sabotage halt construction of the three-arched bridge, a man suspected of the crimes is discovered walled up in the foundation, with only his head protruding from the stone. Is his death meant to deter other saboteurs or to appease the spirits of the river? Does it fulfill an ancient prophecy or predict further bloodshed? Superbly written, resonant with menace and sorrow, The Three-Arched Bridge is as powerful an evocation of a vanished world as The Name of the Rose."A vivid, macabre and wise novel, set in the 14th century, when the author's Albanian homeland was suffering disruptions that suggest the Balkans of today." - The New York Times Book Review"One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language." -Wall Street Journal"Kadare's prose glimmers with the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)

From the Inside Flap
In 1377, the Balkan peninsula is a bridge between cultures. On one side lies the flotsam of the receding Byzantine empire, an unruly alliance whose peoples quarrel in half a dozen tongues; on the other, the encroaching hordes of Ottoman Turkey. On the banks of a river somewhere in between these powers, another bridge is rising. And in telling its story, Albania's greatest living writer creates what is at once a magnificently realized historical novel and a chilling parable of the new barbarism that has swept the Balkans.

When mysterious acts of sabotage halt construction of the three-arched bridge, a man suspected of the crimes is discovered walled up in the foundation, with only his head protruding from the stone. Is his death meant to deter other saboteurs or to appease the spirits of the river? Does it fulfill an ancient prophecy or predict further bloodshed? Superbly written, resonant with menace and sorrow, The Three-Arched Bridge is as powerful an evocation of a vanished world as The Name of the Rose.

"A vivid, macabre and wise novel, set in the 14th century, when the author's Albanian homeland was suffering disruptions that suggest the Balkans of today." - The New York Times Book Review

"One of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language." -Wall Street Journal

"Kadare's prose glimmers with the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The receding Byzantine empire has left behind a patchwork of warring principalities, peopled by a volatile mix of Croats and Serbs, Bulgars and Magyars, Albanians and Greeks. The people here fight over everything, not just over pastures and sheep but even over the authorship of their countless legends. In one such gruesome tale, a castle under construction cannot be finished until a young mason's bride has been walled up alive in the half-completed rampart, one breast left exposed to suckle her growing infant even after she has died. This ghastly myth becomes a perverse reality when, in the spring of 1378, the construction of a bridge over a strategically important river is hampered by repeated acts of sabotage. A mason suspected in the crime is discovered one morning immured up to his collarbones under the first of the bridge's three stone arches, his head an shoulders peering out through a milky veil of plaster. As in the legend, his partial immurement permits construction to proceed. But his will not be the last human sacrifice on the bridge that breaches Europe's first line of defense against the threat of Islam. Inspired by Nobel Prize-winner Ivo Andric's "Bridge on the River Drina", Ismail Kadare's newest novel to appear in English is a chilling parable of the Balkans' tortured past.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

A spare and haunting story of how a bridge becomes both a unifying and divisive force, by the great Albanian author ("The Pyramid"; "The Concert", 1994, etc.) who has been frequently nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Originally written in 1976/78, and published in French in 1993, this is the first-person narrative of Gjon, a monk who serves a small Balkan village during the later years of the 14th century (in a country then known as Arberia). When a madman's prophecy encourages the building of a stone bridge across the nearby river, conservative voices lament the passing of old ways, local boat- and raft-men scheme to subvert the project, and furtive damage to the structure's foundation provokes the following sentiment: "The bridge was built during the day and destroyed at night by the spirits of the water. It demanded a sacrifice." A villager suspected of sabotaging the bridge becomes that sacrifice and is walled up inside one of its arches—in a sequence recounted by Kadare with virtually Homeric restraint and power. The bridge is completed, and the resulting "miracle in stone" becomes, as Gjon reluctantly understands, his countrymen's "bridge" to forced assimilation with the encroaching Ottoman Empire, whose soldiers are among the first who dare cross it. This gripping parable closely resembles the indigenous legends and ballads that its narrator repeatedly invokes (including the story of a girl returned to her village by her dead brother that Kadare retold in his novel "Doruntine" (1988) and resembles also, by design, Bosnian author Ivo Andric's great novel "The Bridge on the Drina" (1977). In fact, Kadare's story stands to Andric's approximately as William Styron's "Lie Down in Darkness" does to "The Sound and the Fury", or Isabel Allende's "The House of the Spirits" to "One Hundred Years of Solitude": both homage and partial imitation.

Shakespeare and Chaucer would have understood. Imitation or not, this is a masterpiece. The Nobel can't come a moment too soon.