In 2014, The Week published a list of six books Kadare proposes to his readers, books by other authors who appear to have impressed the Albanian writer while reading.
"Hell" - Dante Aligieri
This is Aligier's first book within Divine Comedy, followed by Purgatory and Paradise. "Hell" deals with the recognition and rejection of sin on the way to God.
"Don Quixote" - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
This book talks about the adventures of Don Quixote. Stories about the legendary knights were still widely read during the period when Servantess wrote Don Quixote. These kinds of stories idealized the knight who killed endless dragons, monsters and armies of enemies.
"Macbeth" - Shakespeare
Kadare is excited by Shakespeare and especially by Macbeth's tragedy. Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's tragedies depicting the bloody power struggle in Scotland during the 11th century. Macbeth is a general in the king's army and one day he suddenly meets a witch. The sorcerer predicts his fate and tells him that one day he will become king, but that he does not know where.
"Dead Spirits" - Nikolai Gogoli
The book was written in 1842 as it began with a letter Pushkin sent to Gogol telling him that he had to write a novel on Don Quixote in Russian style. The mentality, the guilt, the excuses, the Russian morality is central to this work.
