Kadare, Ismail by The Palace of Dreams

New York. 1993. Morrow. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0688111831. Written In Albanian & Translated from the French Of Jusuf Vrioni by Barbara Bray. 205 pages. hardcover. keywords: Literature Translated Albania Eastern Europe . FROM THE PUBLISHER - In a profound and unsettling novel set in the Balkan peninsula, Ismail Kadare depicts an insidious and highly effective empire. At the heart of the Sultan's vast but fragile empire stands the mysterious Palace of Dreams: the most secret, powerful, macabre ministry ever invented. Its task is to scour every town, village, and hamlet to collect the citizens' dreams, then to sift, sort, and classify them, and ultimately to interpret them, in order to identify the Master-Dreams that will provide clues to the empire's destiny and that of its monarch. An entire nation's unconscious is thus tapped and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind. The people employed by the ministry work in constant dread of overlooking that one crucial dream that will forewarn the Sultan of impending doom. Mark-Alem, scion of a noble family that has provided Viziers to the Sultan from time immemorial, a family whose power the Sultan distrusts, is recruited into the Palace of Dreams at the humblest level. But rapidly he rises through the hierarchy. Through his bewildered eyes we see the intimate workings of this labyrinthine institution that must, fatally, grind him up - along with his family - in its blind mechanism of oppression. The Palace of Dreams stands at the center of the kingdom of darkness; it is the symbol of the thought-police who have, through history, been the most effective instruments at the service of dictators. inventory #22508 ISBN: 0688111831.