The Pyramid

The seventh novel to have appeared in English from the Albanian author (of, most notably, Chronicle in Stone, 1987, and The Concert, 1994) who is frequently mentioned as a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize. This is a parable, set in Egypt in the twenty-sixth century B.C. and after, about the building of the pyramids as a tactic employed by the state to involve its populace in a vast ongoing (and "useless'') project designed to instill fear and suppress dissent. Kadare develops his core idea with dry funereal wit and trains a sardonic eye on the novel's only real character, the surly, megalomaniac young pharaoh Cheops.... -- Kirkus Reviews