Sunday, February 19, 2017

Blendi Fevziu's Enver Hodxa

I read Enver Hodxa with great interest.  I knew nothing about him prior to reading this, and only slightly more about Albania.  I think this is an important book, because it is accessible and tells a story of a dictator lacking in any sense of human connection.  One of the things that is most striking about Hodxa's story is the fact that the only people with whom he was close but did not were the members of his immediate family.  Read the book, and you learn one thing:  only Enver survived among his colleagues, comrades, and friends.

While the writing is good, I thought that the first 2/3 of the book lacked a clear, strong organizing structure.  The last section, which essentially is organized around the final purge and then Hodxa's declining health and death, was the strongest. 

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