El padre

‘The father was so pure, that you sometimes felt like killing him’ – this is one of the key phrases of this novel written in the Albanian language, in Bucharest (2003). A sexagenarian father, his wife and their only son withstand a history where the dictatorship of an ideology has become a dictatorship against destiny, the dictatorship of destiny against the individual and (secretly) the dictatorship of each man against all. ‘When the ideologies only lead to utopias – often being transformed into multiple massacres – in such a way that man is satisfied with little and pleased with nothing, The Father has helped me see well-known things, but never written, and written things, but unknown on a profound level. For often, where life seems unbearable, the intensity of feelings, of questions lacking an answer, is a kind of miracle’ the author said.
“The Father”* introduces a new vision of the ancient phenomenon of vengeance (blood-taking / gjakmarrja – AL.). Any relation between generations contains at least one (sometimes instinctive) tendency to revenge. Each generation feels justified to take revenge on the previous generation, supposedly in the name of the following generation, and in this manner three generations are hurt. In this context, “The Father” is also a hymn to parents’ silent sacrifices and generally to ancestors who were ideologically and not spiritually judged.