Abstract

If one tried to select the best work from Ismail Kadare’s opus, they would face many dilemmas. This has also happened to critics who have dealt with his creativity. When analyzing the causes, it turns out that the findings are either derivative of subjective tastes or of their knowledge. There is a distinction between foreign scholars and Albanian scholars. The former read “Chronicle in Stone” primarily as an imaginative artistic product, while Albanians, being closely familiar with Gjirokastra and the author’s hometown, see it as artistic construction on the basis of artifacts and the sociocultural aspect. In this article I have attempted to expose precisely this difference of perspective between foreign and domestic scholars, defining even others who view this novel as Kadare’s masterpiece. I have mainly used the comparative method, but always combined it with analysis and synthesis, especially given the fact that the work resembles a mosaic in a structural sense.