The Pyramid

Discover Kadare's classic parable of life under a communist dictatorship

When the new Egyptian Pharaoh decrees that he does not want a pyramid built in his honour his advisers are aghast. It is their firm belief that peace and prosperity only make the people more difficult to control they must be kept under the whip. So the Pharaoh agrees to the construction of a pyramid colossal beyond imagining, an edifice that crushes dozens of people as each block is added and which inexorably drains the lifeblood from the country. As Egypt builds its monument to death, its neighbours plot and gloat

He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadares is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil Independent on Sunday