L'aigle by Ismail KadaréMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Disclosure:
I have got this Novel just temporally from the Library during a competition held for the Book lovers, I spend three days reading this French Political novel and blow was the outcome.
My Plot:
First of all, the story happens in Albania during the communist government period. Max the protagonist was getting out to get some cigarette, he met the Bar boss; and both they engaged in an obscure discourse of being in "the High" and how to get there. Max at this moment begin the process of intoxicating his mind, he was unsatisfied with several incidents that happens in his environment, especially the runaway of the serpent from the zoo and the death of the crocodile, these events happened during the reduction of government from the fund that was allowed for the zoo. One day Max was sitting in "the Bar of Liberty" and accidentally wrote in the Glass of the windows the name of his Fiancée Anna, at this moment a girl was passing by the road, and saw her name written in the reverse, she came in the Bar and they acquaint each other. During their intrigue Max was revealing to annA that they should go outside the country and flee for their life from the revolution that was coming. The girl annA was satisfied with her situation and she did not gave much attention to what he said. Max inspiration' to the Eagle was deep, so one day he get to the zoo, and ask the Zoo keeper about the Eagle's cage, he was shown the Eagle place but the Zoo keeper tell Max that the Eagle stay in hunger each day and that it is the last to eat after all animals. Max grab no attention to these recommendations. The day after Max feels a high temperature in his head, annA gave him some aspirin to calm down the temperature, but Max was eager to flee from this country, so the end was like this. Max went to the butcher to have some meat, he get some extra meet as a gift from the Butcher, and stole his big knife. Max was heading toward the Eagle's cage to feed him and to let the Eagle fly with him to the land where there is no darkness, in the morning the citizen of the city woke up with a horrible news, Max was killed by the Eagle, the latter gets out both his eyes, in response the Eagle was killed by Max too due to the sharpness of the Butcher's knife.
Positive and Negative Aspects:
The story events were the most entity that make the reader wonder about what's going on the story. The positive aspect in this work was that the events were interrelated, so it was hard for me to give simple plot to this work, Besides, the style used in this work were simple and understandable. Concerning the negative aspects, I would simply say that Kadaré attacked violently the Communism and all its aspects inside this work, he was trying to refer that Communism was the main horror that all Characters suffer from, in fact his imaginations were far fetching from reality, The writer in this work tried to implement the same method that George Orwell did in 1984. Most characters in "L'aigle" were suffering from horror of government and from the ghost of Communism, he was really trying to implement a bad image of Communism and Bureaucracy inside the Albanian state.
My Personal Reaction:
Reality is that I am not a fan of Politics at all, Politics for me is a dirty game. But by reviewing this Novel I am opposed to take part in it. First Kadaré choose the name "Eagle" as a title to his work, in fact the Eagle itself was the symbol of Albania, so speaking about this Eagle is mainly a comment to the state directly, Inside the story we hear that the Eagle was the last one to eat and that it was kept in hunger even since it is the symbol of that state. the End of the protagonist against the Eagle also was symbolic. so summing up all these aspects, we simply say that Kadaré was trying to depict an obscure image of Communism against the State of Eagles "Shqiperia", and that the death of the Protagonist was in fact a fight for freedom and dignity of Albanian self. Personally I use much effort to understand the meaning of this work but I really admit that the meaning was vague inside the story.
Recommendations:
This book is simply recommended to Albanian citizens first of all, and to the fans of Ismael Kadaré. I recommend readers of this work to focus on each single detail inside the story in order to accomplish the process of understanding this Political novel.
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