The Doll

The Doll: A Portrait of My Mother is an autobiographical novel sketching Albanian author Ismail Kadare's relationship with his mother. It dwells upon the family's life in Gjirokastër and later in Tirana, "full of compelling details of life in a changing Albania", as well as on the author's own time as a student at the Gorky Institute in Moscow. While the portrait of his mother remains insubstantial, there are reflections upon the author's own youthful literary ambitions, and the nature of autocracy.