”Allah ! It's more than six centuries and I am tired, recluse sovereign, in the Christian vastnesses. Sometimes, at the most dark hours, I wonder whether my blood would not be at the origin of all these horrors (…) Please let my blood be extracted and carried out of this frozen plain…” This is an extract of the prayer of Mourad 1st addressed to God. The sultan of the Ottoman army, fictitious witness of the recent wars in ex-Yugoslavia, wonders whether his victory of June 28, 1389 is not a curse for the people of Balkans who do not stop carrying mourning of it (the battle had taken place on the plain of Kosovo and was won in 10 hours). June 28, 1989, date of its sixth centenary, the Serbian leader Milošević launched a new massacre in Kosovo, this time against the Albanians. Some consider it's this day that the implosion of Yugoslavia started…

The most famous Albanian writer wrote an account of a rare sobriety. This collection, in its impartiality, is an attempt to give a testimony of the lost nobility of this civilization, and a hope that it reappears.

Buy online :

• English translation Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.com
• French translation Amazon.fr

(Thanks to Caroline for this article)