SOURCE: Elsie, Robert. Review of Shkaba, by Ismail Kadare. World Literature Today 70, no. 4 (autumn 1996): 1008.

In the following review, Elsie regards Shkaba as an allegory for the practice of political internment under the communist regime in Albania.

[In Shkaba, t]wenty-two-year-old Max went out one evening to buy a pack of cigarettes. On his way down the street, he passed under some scaffolding, slipped on a board, and fell, plunging into another world. There he found himself in a community not unsimilar to his own, a small town in the provinces with a bar, a bank, and a zoo. Max discovered that he was not the only stranger to have made the abrupt descent from the world he knew; even some of his acquaintances were there. He also learned that there was no return. Like everyone else, he came to realize he would have to make do.

For the...