The novel is set in the fictionalized, timeless world of the Ottoman Empire, focusing on a massive bureaucratic institution known as the , or the Palace of Dreams. The mandate of this government ministry is absolute: to collect, sort, classify, and interpret the dreams of every citizen in the empire.
Like Franz Kafka’s The Trial , Kadare depicts a massive, labyrinthine bureaucracy that operates on its own inscrutable logic. The employees of the Palace are cogs in a machine, detached from the human consequences of their paperwork. The mundane, clinical nature of their work contrasts sharply with the life-or-death stakes of the dream interpretations. Identity and Historical Memory the palace of dreams pdf
Despite being banned two weeks after its Albanian publication, the novel is widely regarded as one of Kadare's masterpieces. It has received widespread international acclaim. Vanity Fair called it "Kadare's most daring novel, one of the most complete visions of totalitarianism ever committed to paper," while The Guardian stated, "If there is a book worth banning in a dictatorship, this is it". The novel is set in the fictionalized, timeless
