TWILIGHT OF THE EASTERN GODS

1958. In a dorm room in Moscow, a young writer in woken by the sound of angry voices on the radio. Through the fog of a hangover he hears the news that a novel called Doctor Zhivago has won the Nobel Prize. There is uproar. The author, Boris Pasternak, faces exile, the press hound him, and protestors line the streets. A few days earlier the young writer found a copy of this book - could those simple pages really be so dangerous? Based on Ismail Kadare's own experience, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a fictionalised recreation of his time as a student at the prestigious Gorky Institute for World Literature - a strange 'factory of the intellect' set up to produce a new generation of Socialist writers. With its drunken nights, corrupt professors, specially selected students and enforced Soviet Realism his time at the Gorky Institute brought Kadare to the brink of abandoning writing altogether. In English for the first time, Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a portrait of a city and a time, it is a story of youth, of disenchantment and of the incredible importance of the written word.