This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Ismail Kadare's The Accident, a rich and strange examination of change, starts with a bang: A taxi crashes, killing the Albanian couple in the backseat. The driver, who survives, cannot explain why he lost control of the car, except that "perhaps ... in the rear-view mirror ... maybe something had distracted him."
Kadare, the prolific Albanian novelist and 2005 winner of the Man Booker International Prize, has constructed a maze of maybes where opaque motivations lead to startling ramifications. A nameless researcher studies the accident for unknown reasons, spending years piecing together evidence — notes, receipts, interviews — in hopes of discovering what distracted the driver. Principles of literary criticism steer both his analysis and the novel itself: The cabbie's eventual revelation that his passengers were "trying to kiss" sends the researcher into a semantic tailspin. How is it that two people might try to kiss? If both try, wouldn't both succeed?
Based on the shifting language of the couple's love letters, the researcher spots a possible explanation, an indication of dysfunction: At some point in their relationship, the passengers, Rovena and Besfort, seem to have metamorphosed from boyfriend and girlfriend into client and call girl. Ultimately, the researcher writes his own account of their relationship, fictionalizing in order to arrive at the truth (or, if not quite there, then a drivable distance away).
He imagines that, after years together, the couple has grown less attached. To compensate, Besfort aims to curate evolution within his relationship: He and Rovena will transform into customer and prostitute. "They would experience the revival of desire as no one had ever done before. Whenever they saw each other, they would be strangers, but familiar, as if they had seen each other in dreams." Faced with the possible end of their affair, they seek permanence in paradox: They will remain themselves by playing different parts; they will ensure closeness through keeping distance.
Sound fun? "Falling in love," observes a friend of Rovena's. "A bit like falling into a pit." The couple's fall is of the Edenic variety, toward forbidden knowledge, and they wander a literary landscape riddled by the abysses of characters with similar goals. Encouraging Rovena to try his idea, Besfort mentions the philosopher Empedocles, who jumped into the crater of Etna to see what no man had before. Ulysses, whom Dante sends sailing off the end of the earth in his quest for knowledge, floats in the background, too — warning that this couple, seeking a new experience of love, may be engineering its own doom.
As Rovena and Besfort begin bending the rules of their relationship, the novel bursts through its own constraints, turning from realist mystery into surrealist foray. The lovers travel extensively in contemporary Europe, which — in the midst of forging its own union — provides a fitting backdrop to both transformations.
So do the shifting fortunes of Albania. Kadare's ambivalent portrayals of dictator Enver Hoxha have drawn criticism in the past; here, the emergence of his native land from Hoxha's regime symbolizes the possibility of miraculous change. After Besfort hears the "rattling of the chains dragging the dictator's statue through the centre of Tirana," he observes: "It was this sound, louder than any earthquake, that divided past from present. Everything that had once been impossible suddenly became real" — even, perhaps, a revolutionary kind of love.
Echoing with literary references, enriched by political relevance, Besfort and Rovena's investigation manages to seem groundbreaking despite its central flaw: Few paradigms of male-female relations are more archetypal than that between prostitute and client. Seeking a new kind of love via an old model is like trying to reach the moon on a pogo stick: Readers might admire the effort but question the efficacy. Similarly, Besfort's efforts to shape his relationship, and his girlfriend, into forms he prefers — and her willingness to accept this sexualized and sexist arrangement — feel outdated. It's a testament to both Besfort and Kadare's powers of persuasion that Rovena and I stayed so involved.
So what happened in the cab? And did the couple attain a higher state? Kadare proves more interested in mysteries than solutions, but it is a fact — or as close to fact as this remarkable novelist gets — that whatever the driver saw sent the cab flying through the air before it fell back to earth.