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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Kadare, Gospodinov, Kafka and Dickens
Description: The Palace of Dreams is a novel from 1981 that is ostensibly set in the 19th century Ottoman empire, but the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare cleverly smuggles in thinly veiled criticism of the totalitarian state presided over by Enver Hoxha. The book was duly banned shortly after publication. Matthew Sweet looks at this and other examples of fiction that satirise bureaucratic overreach from Dickens to Kafka to Georgi Gospodinov, the Bulgarian novelist who won the 2023 International Booker prize for his novel Time Shelter. Sharing their thoughts on these books and on the history and role of bureaucracy within both democratic...