The File on H

by David Bellos (Translator), David Bellos (Translator), Ismail Kadare (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $4.22

  Two Irish-American scholars from Harvard journey to Albania in the 1930s with a tape recorder (a 'new fangled' invention) in order to record the last genuinely oral epic singers. Their purpose, they say, is to show how Homer's epics might have been culled from a verbal tradition. But the local Governor believes its an elaborate spying mission and arranges for his own spy to follow them.The two dedicated scholars realise only too late that they have stumbled over an ants' nest. This simple tale by Albania's most eminent and gifted novelist serves to lift the veil on one of the most secret and mysterious countries of modern Europe.

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $3.62

  In the mid-1930s, two Irish-American scholars arrive in a small town in Northern Albania to carry out research on the surviving tradition of spoken verse epics, recording the last of the wandering ballad-mongers. They hope to solve the mystery of Homer's authorship of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $11.47

  Two Irish-American scholars from Harvard journey to Albania in the 1930s with a tape recorder (a 'new fangled' invention) in order to record the last genuinely oral epic singers. Their purpose, they say, is to show how Homer's epics might have been culled from a verbal tradition. But the local Governor believes its an elaborate spying mission and arranges for his own spy to follow them.The two dedicated scholars realise only too late that they have stumbled over an ants' nest. This simple tale by Albania's most eminent and gifted novelist serves to lift the veil on one of the most secret and mysterious countries of modern Europe.