Literary places in Gjirokastër

Chronicle in Stone

Ismail Kadare

A boy watches his ancient stone city on its mountainside change hands again and again, Italians, Greeks, Italians, Greeks, Germans, in the chaos of the Second World War. Kadare's own Gjirokastër is the whole book: the steep grey stone houses with their cisterns and slate roofs, the castle brooding over the town, the aerodrome the Italians cut into the plain below, and the old bazaar where the city's life and rumour churn.

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