The File On H.

I struggled four days to finish reading this book. Halfway through the book, I discovered the secret to enjoy reading it, i.e., reading it slowly at some points and adjusting the pacing at other points. It was like an erratic rhythm, which made the experience exciting. Therefore, I had to re-read the book from page one. The trick worked.

“The File on H” is a poetic take on the doomed academic undertaking of two Irish-American Homeric scholars in search of the remaining rhapsodes (epic singers) in Albania to record their thousand-line ballads that these scholars believe they can connect to the enigma of Homer. The way the author (Ismail Kadare) describes (as the story moves deeper into the book's pages) the microcosmic paranoia of a small Albanian town, the suspicion of the town's bureaucrats who assume the scholars must be spies, the ambiguity of a Madame Bovary-like character who is the governor’s wife, the insistence of an arrogant Serbian monk to credit the epic to Serbia not Albania, the everyday people’s take on the scholars’ tape recorder which during that time nobody had seen before, and the political undertone of the novel are almost comedic and amazingly enjoyable. The metaphors, e.g., one of the character’s progressively degrading eyesight, and the strategically inserted glimpses of troubled Albanian history into the story’s text elevate the novel to a higher art.

I am ambiguous about the ending though. I guess that’s the point.

(February 14, 2009)