‘A Dictator Calls’ by Ismail Kadare (Review – IBP 2024, Number Thirteen)

Hospital visiting hours are over, so it’s time to leave our new friend to her memories and head off on another International Booker Prize longlist excursion, the thirteenth and final outing for this year.  We’re off to Albania today, but this is a book with a very Russian theme, with two rather well-known men at its heart.  It’s all about a certain phone call, one that most in Moscow have heard about – so why does everyone have different ideas as to what exactly was said?  Let’s find out…

*****

A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare
– Harvill Secker, translated by John Hodgson
(digital review copy courtesy of the publisher)
What’s it all about?
A Dictator Calls: The Mystery of the Stalin-Pasternak Phone Call starts off as yet another of the works of autofiction that have littered this year’s IBP longlist.  The writer reflects on his past, including a stay in Moscow and a rather awkward conversation with his editor back in Tirana when he attempts to have a book with a Russian theme published, an amusing conversation in which it’s hard to tell who is more afraid of whom.

However, these scenes are merely the window-dressing for the main theme of the book, namely the titular phone call.  In June 1934, Joseph Stalin phoned Boris Pasternak to sound him out regarding the arrest of the poet Osip Mandelstam.  Pasternak, caught by surprise, reacts rather defensively, and after a last cutting remark, Stalin hangs up, never to be heard from again.  Which all sounds rather straightforward.

The beauty of A Dictator Calls, however, lies in the way Kadare shows us that it’s anything but.  Even if there’s a transcript of the call in the KGB archives, opinions differ as to what exactly was said, and the writer offers up thirteen different versions of the call for our pleasure, each provided by a different source who puts their own spin on the conversation.  The more we hear of the brief chat between the dictator and the writer, the less certain we are of just what happened – and why.

At the heart of the novel is the fateful conversation, but if you assume that the fate of Mandelstam hangs in the balance, you’re mistaken.  Kadare is quick to point out something many people forget, that this all took place four years before the poet’s eventual arrest and death.  His contention is that the call couldn’t have been that important, and may just have been a whim on Stalin’s part.

In any case, the call was important enough for it to make the Moscow rounds, and beyond, a brief conversation that certainly made waves:

“Three minutes,” he said, “just three minutes and we’ve almost gone out of our minds analysing them, then just imagine this whole epoch, the most perfidious in history.  And you thought that seven versions might be too many.  There could never be too many.  Too few, certainly.”
p.163 (Harvill Secker, 2023)

The call perhaps has more value as an example of a single event representing the paranoia of the whole era.  It was one where people lived in constant fear and learned to second-guess the meaning of the most trivial of comments – or phone calls…

That’s what Kadare does here, going through his thirteen versions and commenting on them.  Each time, he goes through the version, discussing the credibility not just of what is said, but of who says it:

This is the moment when something breaks down between them.  We don’t know if Pasternak fell silent for a moment.  Nor do we know anything more about the situation that now arose between them.  Pasternak might have questioned his own sincerity.  It was something he rightly asked of himself, but were other people sincere with him? (pp.174/5)

Kadare examines the relationship between Pasternak and the source of the conversations, analysing their motives, and the possibility of there being an agenda to their version of events.

Of course, there’s a broader view to it all, with the story shining a light on the links between art and politics.  There’s Kadare himself and his editor back in Albania, both on edge because of the mention of Moscow (out of favour in Tirana) in Kadare’s novel, neither quite sure who has the upper hand in their chats.  This is a minor echo of the uneasy relationship between Stalin and Pasternak, in which the great dictator behaves differently with the writer, lending a suspicion that he needs him somehow.  Towards the end of the ‘story’, Kadare even has us wondering who actually has the most power in this dynamic.

A less generous reader might just dismiss A Dictator Calls as a writing exercise, with Kadare showing off for the hell of it, just because he can.  However, for me it all comes together nicely, with the writer tying together the phone call, his own experiences in Moscow and his experiences with editors and censorship.  There’s just one big question – why?:

Rarely has so much been said and written about a phone conversation.  Analysts have pored over the records endlessly and insisted on conflicting opinions.  Archive sources have not helped to establish a reliable version of the conversation and have even prompted suspicions that it never happened at all. (p.215)

Alas, there’s no likelihood of one being offered here, but even if we’re left scratching our heads as to what it’s all about, A Dictator Calls makes for an enjoyable read all the same…

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
I wasn’t really looking forward to trying this one as most of my fellow Shadow Judges were somewhat underwhelmed, but perhaps as a result I quite enjoyed it.  I found it an interesting, clever look at a subject I hadn’t heard of before, and having caught me on a good day, A Dictator Calls just about squeaks into my personal top six.

Why didn’t it make the shortlist?
I can see how this one might outstay its welcome with its many variations on a theme, and while the judges put it on their longlist, that second read might just have been one too many…

*****
It’s time to hang up on our illustrious friends, and that marks the end of this year’s vicarious journey around the world!  I hope you’ve enjoyed our literary travels and made your own minds up as to which of these books deserves to take out this year’s prize.  Speaking of which, that will be the next step, both for the official judges and the Shadow Panel.  Come back on the 21st of May to see whether great minds think alike, or whether (as is often the case) we’ve gone in a different direction to the experts – here’s hoping it’s a good choice, whatever it proves to be…