Why did the taxi crash on the autobahn in Vienna?
Who exactly were Besfort Y and Rovena, the mysterious couple who died after being flung from the back seat?
How was Besfort connected to the war in the Balkans? And why was his affair with Rovena clouded in jealousy and mistrust?
Who wanted them dead?
This is the story of the last forty weeks of their lives - a fever dream where love and obsession collide.
Industry Reviews
* One of the most important voices in literature today. Metro * His fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny - his historical allegories point both to the grand themes and small details that make up life in a restrictive environment. He is a great writer, by any nation's standards. Financial Times * A master storyteller. -- John Carey * One of the great writers of our time. Scotsman * Ismail Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness. Los Angeles Times * The Accident cannot be put aide, but rickly teases the reader to try to understand more of the meaning of what, exactly, the cab driver glimpsed in his rear-view mirror. The Independent * Ismail Kadare has somtimes been compared with Kafka, and you can see why. Scottish Mail on Sunday * A compelling performance...lean, calm and footsure, Kadare's writing keeps you reading. -- Phil Baker The Sunday Times * harks back to spy mysteries of the Cold War era...Kadare teasingly guides us through the search for an elusive truth...played out against the power struggles of Europe's states. The Metro * one goes to him precisely for that quality of indeterminacy, which he uses to advance a very singular vision of the intractable murkiness of human affairs. The Guardian * compelling The Guardian * a deliberately mystifying book [with] a continental seriousness about it, a Milan Kundera-like quality about its very un-English mixture of sex and political history. the Sunday Times * compulsive and unnerving...a provocative exploration of the sinister underside of human relations. -- Mary Fitzgerald The Observer * In John Hodgson's translation, Kadare's prose retains its elusive elegance -- Jane Shilling The Sunday Telegraph * There are books which seem less the second-time round; Kadare's seem more...one can relish his mastery of tone and the tireless probing intelligence of narrative. -- Allan Massie The Scotsman * Beautifully told in sparce, simple prose. Scottish Review of Books * Toys with the reader's mind in something of the same way Hoxha once played with Kadare and his fellow citizens. Herald
