For Albania, I read The Doll by Ismail Kadare, who was the winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005. This was actually my first stop on My Read Around the World quest because I had already read The Kite Runner for Afghanistan and I thought “hey, that counts” but The Doll was so interesting, I realized I wanted to read a book for every country in the world in order, regardless of whether I had previously read a book for that country. If I’m going to expand my mind, I might as well expand it as much as possible, right?

The Doll is an autobiographical novel, the titular doll being the author’s mother. As I started the book, I resented the author’s depiction of his mother. It struck me as misogynistic and cruel. Maybe I was a bit sensitive because I’m a mother and I see things from the mom’s perspective these days? But about midway through the book, it occurred to me that Kadare’s depiction of his “mother” was actually an analogy for Albania, the author’s motherland. Once I had that epiphany, I was able to enjoy The Doll much more and by the time I finished, I wanted to read more of Kadare’s works.

This was such an interesting book to start my Around the World journey because the author writes about becoming a writer in a communist country. He attended a writer’s school in Moscow, where they were lectured against “the Joyce-Kafka-Proust trio” and “learned that we must not write like them; while at nights, tortured by doubt, we could hardly resist the temptation of writing precisely in their manner.” Kadare, The Doll, pg. 85-86.

Although the book is a fleeting 175 pages, it really brought me into the world of communist Albania. I felt like I was inside the author’s childhood home in a town with steep hills and hostile mother-in-laws, and the passages about learning to write under a communist regime really got my neurons firing.

When I ordered this book, I felt very uncertain about my Read Around the World Quest. It seemed too bold, too big, too self-indulgent. But The Doll expanded my horizons so much that by the time I reached its end, I was fully committed to read a book by an author from every country in the world.

The world is vast and full of so many different experiences. I loved experiencing it from Kadare’s perspective for 175 pages, and I plan to read more of his books when I finish this challenge.