''Twilight of the Eastern Gods'' (Albanian: ''Muzgu i perëndive të stepës'', French: ''Le Crépuscule des dieux de la steppe'') is a novel by the Albanian author

Ismail Kadare Ismail Kadare (; spelled Ismaïl Kadaré in French; born on 28 January 1936) is an Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. He is a leading international literary figure and intellectual. He focused on poetry until the pu ...

. It was published in installments in

Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...

between 1962 and 1978, and published in full in 1981 in the French translation of

Jusuf Vrioni Jusuf Vrioni (16 March 1916 – 1 June 2001) was an Albanian athlete, translator, diplomat, and Albanian ambassador to UNESCO. Vrioni was born in Corfu, Greece, on 16 March 1916, son of Ilias Bey Vrioni. He spent his youth in Corfu and later in ...

. The English translation by

David Bellos David Bellos (born 1945) is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton ...

, published in 2014, was made from Vrioni's French. The narrator is a young Albanian studying at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in the late 1950s, working on a novel about "a dead army commanded by a living general". The book focuses on the drabness of life in the student residence, and the suspicions and disaffection of the writers being trained to produce

Socialist realist Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ...

literature. The action of the novel takes place during the Soviet propaganda campaign that forced Boris Pasternak to decline the

Nobel prize for literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

for '' Dr Zhivago''. It provides a lively parody of the fake public outrage of the campaign. Parallels with the life of Kadare, who also studied at the Gorky Institute in the late 1950s, and wrote an early novel entitled '' The General of the Dead Army'' (1963), suggest that the narrator should be regarded as an alter ego of the author.

References

1981 novels Novels by Ismail Kadare Novels set in Moscow Novels set in the 20th century Onufri Publishing House books Canongate Books books {{1970s-novel-stub