Author(s): Ismail Kadare

Fiction

The mysterious palace of dreams stands at the heart of a vast empire. Inside, workers sift, sort, and interpret the dreams the empire s citizens. They search out Master-Dreams that will provide clues to the destiny of the empire and its Sultan. Mark-Alem, scion of a noble family that has provided viziers to the Sultan from time immemorial, and whose power the Sultan distrusts, is recruited into the palace of Creams at the humblest level. He immediately feels the terrible pressure that drives his coworkers, the dread of overlooking a crucial dream whose capture and interpretation might avert political disaster. But he rapidly rises through the hierarchyonly barely finding his bearings in one section of the Palace s labyrinthine passages that represent the entire empire s consciousness laid bare before he is promoted to another. And the pressure only increases as he becomes familiar with the fates of subversive dreamers and personally responsible for the sort of dreams that might ruin an entire family. A family like his own."