The Siege - by Ismail Kadare, translated from the original Albanian into French by Jusuf Vrioni and from the French by David Bellos

Albania’s most distinguished novelist tells the story of fifteenth-century Ottoman invaders who lay siege to an Albanian fortress and find their assaults thwarted. Kadare mostly narrates from the Ottomans’ perspective, but intersperses short, stylized accounts from the point of view of the besieged Christians. The novel’s conscience is an official campaign chronicler for the invaders worried about how to confect a suitably stirring account from the failure and ugliness he witnesses. The resulting tone is both antic and poignant. At one point, Ottoman soldiers, unused to seeing women unveiled, look at the faces of women they have captured: “The men thought they were laughing, but they were actually sobbing. Unless it was the other way round.”