The File on H
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| Author | Ismail Kadare |
|---|---|
| Original title (if not in English) | Dosja H |
| Country | Albania |
| Language | Albanian |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | |
| Released | 1981 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN |
The File on H is a novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It first appeared in Albanian in 1981 under the title Dosja H.
Two Homeric scholars, one from America, and one from Ireland, plan to investigate the tradition of oral epic poetry in the mountains of Albania where historical epics are composed and sung by itinerant minstrels as popular entertainment. The singers have been doing this for many generations, possibly since ancient Greek times (H stands for Homer). The scholars travel to Albania with a tape recorder to study the phenomenon and record samples of the singing. Their main interest is in the variations on the tradition exemplified in the work of individual singers and whether there is regional bias in their interpretations.
When they reach their destination, they are confronted by suspicious provincial townspeople and a paranoid local governor, who sends a spy after them. The story is a metaphor for why legends remain mythic despite our attempts to discover the truth, and highlights the difficulty that the modern world has in truly understanding past civilizations.
The File on H has an agenda in cultural history which perhaps detracts from its success as a novel. The expedition of the two scholars is an obvious allusion to the researches of Milman Parry and Albert Lord in Bosnia, whose effect was to make the oral epic tradition in Serbo-Croat far better known, at least in Western scholarship, than it had been before. The novel aims to make the valid point that these and complementary traditions were also transmitted in Albanian (a fact that most scholars continued to ignore); it also, insistently and with more doubtful validity, emphasises Albanian cultural primacy.
The French translation of 1989 (revised in 1996) was by Jusuf Vrioni. It appears in volume 4 of Kadare's collected works (Ismail Kadare: Oeuvres). The English version by David Bellos, published in 1997, was made on the basis of the French translation.
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