Set in the "sybaritic if somewhat torpid atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire",
The Palace of Dreams is, according to his own statement, a realization of Kadare's long-term dream to construct a personalized vision of
hell, devised as a modern counterpart to
Dante's
Inferno, and usually likened by literary critics to
Kafka's,
Orwell's,
Zamyatin's, and
Borges' similar literary inventions. Mark-Alem is a twenty-something (by the end of the novel, 28) Ottoman Albanian, a descendant of the (real) influential
Köprülü family during
the period of its greatest dominance. At the idea of his uncle, the
Vizier, who holds the position of Foreign Minister, Mark-Alem is offered a job at the mysterious and feared Tabir Sarai, a government office responsible for the study of dreams. Even though inexperienced, on the back of a "recommendation that hangs between menace and patronage ('You suit us ...')", he is hired in the "Selection" section of the Palace, where his obligations include making a longlist of interesting dreams and draft-interpretations of the more striking ones. These are then transferred to the more skillful interpreters in the "Interpretation" section, whose job is to make a shortlist for the master-interpreters at the "Office of the Master Dream", which, using much more than experience and
dream dictionaries, chooses and decodes the symbolism of the most emblematic master-dream and relays its message to the
Sultan at the end of each week. Since dreams are considered to be messages by
God, it is believed that these master-dreams hold the answers to the future of the empire, and can help in averting misfortunes and nullifying possible threats. As he rapidly climbs – to his own amazement – the hierarchical ladder within the Tabir Sarai in record time, Mark-Alem gradually realizes that the
labyrinthine Palace holds many secrets and exerts much more influence than publicly acknowledged, ranging from holding subversive dreamers responsible for the products of their unconsciousness to torturing them and being responsible for the demise of whole families based on
dream symbolism – something which, essentially, gives the one who controls the Palace an almost unlimited power. An allusive dream he encounters while still a dream selector will eventually prove to be directly connected with the Köprülüs, supposedly disclosing them as Albanian dissidents within the
Ottoman government, and resulting in a bloody clash between the supporters of the Sultan and the
Vizier, with the confused Mark-Alem caught in the middle, unaware of the extent of his guilt, responsibilities, and even identity. In the resolution, one of Mark-Alem's uncles is executed, but his uncle the Vizier and the family survives with increased power; he himself is raised to the head of the Tabir Sarei. == Censorship ==