**LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024** 'Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with
you.' A fascinating exploration of the relationship between writers and tyranny from the
winner of the first Man Booker International Prize. In June 1934 Joseph Stalin allegedly
telephoned the famous novelist and poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of fellow Soviet
poet Osip Mandelstam. In a fascinating combination of dreams and dossier facts Ismail Kadare
reconstructs the three minutes they spoke and the aftershocks of this tense mysterious moment
in modern history. Weaving together the accounts of witnesses reporters and writers such as
Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova Kadare tells a gripping story of power and political
structures of the relationship between writers and tyranny. The telling brings to light
uncanny parallels with Kadare's experience writing under dictatorship when he received an
unexpected phone call of his own. Translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson 'One of
Europe's most decorated authors... Seasoned fans [of Kadare] will be enthralled' Sunday Times
