Albanian author Ismail Kadare’s semi-autobiographical novel was originally published in 1978. This episodic book is a chronicle of the years (1958-1960) Kadare spent as a graduate student at Moscow’s Gorky Institute, a “factory of the intellect” intended to nurture a new generation of Socialist Realist writers. The novel’s centerpiece is the furor that resulted when the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel in Literature to DOCTOR ZHIVAGO author Boris Pasternak.