Product Description

Edith Durham began her travels late in life on her doctor's orders. She sailed to Montenegro and began a love affair with the Balkans that lasted the rest of her life. This is her passionate account of life in the formidable mountainous terrain of Northern Albania.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #899685 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Fascinating, funny and gains new relevance in the 1990s
Durham's book is well written, frequently funny and acutely observes the clan and household organisation, the blood feuds, the politics and social customs of early 20th century Albania, a time when so many men were killed in blood feuds that the custom had grown up of awarding some lucky women the status of men, allowing them to dress in mens' clothes, work as men and inherit property in return for renouncing marriage. A high attrition rate for men also meant keeping up the clans' numbers was all important. Christians and Muslims alike took their brothers', cousins' or uncles' widows as concubines so that they might have more sons, in a manner recommended in the Old Testament but despaired of by the local priests. Indeed, the Albanians' grasp of religion was often hazy. One man assured Durham that he didn't have to worry about what happened to his soul because he would be dead. Yet Durham also tells us that Christians and Muslims lived in close proximity and had done so for many years. Intermarriage was common. So was changing faith; some tribes of mixed descent eventually ended up calling themselves either Serb or Albanian depending on which religion they ended up adopting. Blood feuds actually helped this intermingling as so many men had to go into exile and live in households outside their own region. Furthermore, Albanians might shoot each other in disputes over family honour (frequently caused by the wickedness of women who just would not marry the men they were sold to), but not over the concept of an ethnically pure nation state, which Albanians of the period mostly didn't understand. High Albania is worth reading for its own sake, but also as a much needed reminder that the history of Albania and Kosevo is complicated and a tradition of clan feuding should not be misused as an excuse to write off the people of the region today as primitives in the grip of some kind of blood lust that makes recent atrocities inevitable. The blood feuds that Durham describes were highly ritualised affairs in which everybody knew the rules and abided by them. In cases where a man could not be killed while in company with others, he could meet his enemies on the road in safety provided he took his brother with him. A code of honour that demanded a life as revenge for an insult to a family was barbaric. What it was not was a justification for violence based on more recently developed concepts of ethnicity and nationality.

A glimpse into antiquity
A good book is capable of opening your eyes to a whole new reality, Ms. Durham does that here. An Italian historian once wrote that the Albanian territories were across the Adriatic Sea yet less known than darkest Africa, this is a valiant effort to remedy that. Ms. Durham ventures, illegaly, into northern "High" Albania with an intrepid curiosity and through Western eyes proceeds to open up the vast horizons of Albanian culture. Imagine a society so isolated by the Alps and suspiscion of outsiders that they still have a ready grasp on pre-Christian traditions and myth. Read this and learn of the highland clans, the "besa", the rights of blood and honour that decimated entire generations of males and oh so much more.

Ms. Durham managed to earn the love and respect of those that trusted no one and had been maltreated by all. She lobbied tirelessly, if vainly, for her adopted people for her entire life and in the end was embraced as the "Queen of the Mountain People." This truly is an exceptional book. Read it.

A Must Read for those Interested in Gheg Albanian Culture
Edith Durham is the undisputed "Queen of the Northern Albanian Alps". She takes you along her tour in Victorian/British-English fashion through the Northern Albanian Alps just after the turn of the century and you feel as if you were just whisked away to ford the streams and climb the mountains with her.

Remarkable as it was to have traversed this landscape in 1909, it was nothing short of a miracle for a woman to have done it. She gained the respect of those she met, showing respect for the great traditional law of the Gheg Albanians--the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini. She was offered "bread and salt" at every table and never doubted the Albanian people's ability to show mikpritje (hospitality) towards an outsider as herself.

Furthermore, I loved the stories she relates about her visits to the specific tribes. She peppers them occasionally with Albanian parables that she was told along the way. For me, this book was amazing and I wholeheartedly recommend it.