Shaping a language …

… Ismail Kadare Grapples With the Supernatural. (Hat tip, Cynthia Haven.)

Kadare is still mapping out the boundaries of Albanian, a relatively recent literary language, where everything is new and newly sayable. He is the first of its writers to achieve an international standing. But how to describe something beyond words? “Better if you don’t know” is a repeated phrase in the book, along with variations of “it’s complicated.”