The Accident, by Ismail Kadare

The Accident was my first 2019 contribution to my world books project. I had long ago noted that I should read something by Ismail Kadare for Albania, and I found The Accident at Idlewild Books (one of the best stores I know of for international literature). The book is about an Albanian couple killed in a mysterious traffic accident (in an unnamed location, but probably outside Vienna) and it's told in three parts: part one is a description of the accident and various authorities' investigations into its cause; part two -- the longest part -- ostensibly covers the last 40 days of the couple's lives before the accident, and in fact covers much more than the last 40 days -- it is essentially a history of their relationship; part three returns to the investigation of the accident by one unnamed researcher who has continued look into it obsessively, believing he can solve the mystery. I mention the structure because the book starts out seeming like a very different book than it is.

At the risk of being gender essentialist, one thing that particularly irks me in some men's writing is a failure to explore the motivations behind the behavior of women characters. I can't help but believe that this relates to a failure to explore the motivations behind women's behavior in life. There is a cliché that women behave inexplicably, and this gives men a pass to create women characters who behave inexplicably -- particularly in their relationships with men. Toward the beginning of part two of The Accident, I was afraid the book was veering into this territory, but to my relief it later on mostly skirted around it. The relationship between the couple at the center of the book is hard to understand. There's an uneven power dynamic -- the man is distant, the woman is needy -- and at first I thought, "here we go again." But the dynamic subtly shifts here and there over the course of the relationship, and in fact it's much more complex than it seems at first. There's also a fascinating overlay of the relationship between the couple and the political events in the Balkans, and some links to Albanian folklore that I wish I understood better.