The Siege
By Ismail Kadare
Translated by David Bellos
Canongate, £16.99, 328 pages
FT bookshop price: £13.59

In 2005, the judges of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize assembled a shortlist of 18 luminaries, including Gabriel García Márquez, Philip Roth, Günter Grass, Milan Kundera and Kenzaburo Oe. When the £60,000 prize for an author’s body of work was won by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, the choice seemed eccentric. He had once been nominated for the Nobel Prize but, until he was awarded the Booker, the émigré writer was little read outside his native country and France, his adoptive home.