The doll : a portrait of my mother / Ismail Kadare ; translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson.
(Book)

First published by Onufri in Albania in 2015 with the title Kukulla.

In his father’s great stone house with hidden rooms and even a dungeon, Ismail grows up with his mother at the center of his universe. Fragile as a paper doll, she finds herself at odds with her tight-lipped and wise mother-in-law who, as is the custom for women of a certain age, will never again step foot over the threshold to leave her home. Young Ismail finds it difficult to understand his mother’s tears, though he can understand her boredom. She told him the reason herself in a phrase that terrified and obsessed the boy: “The house is eating me up!” As Ismail explores his world, his mother becomes fearful of her intellectual son―he uses words she does not understand, writes radical poetry, falls in love far too easily, and seems to renounce everything she believes in. He will, she fears, have to exchange her for some other superior mother when he becomes a famous writer. --from Amazon.

Translated from the Albanian.