Kkum ŭi kungjŏn

So people dream, right. So clearly, the best thing to do for the state, especially a state as fragmented and therefore as dependent on unity as the Ottoman empire ca 1840, is to collect those dreams, analyse them and collate them so you know what your underlings are up to. It's easily done, people are only too happy to share their dreams, and will even complain if you ignore their dreams.

So you have a huge palace in the centre of the capital where thousands of people work on these dreams, selecting them, analysing them, and every Friday presenting one Master Dream to the sultan so he knows what's going on in his empire and can make decisions.

So you start working there as the runt of the litter of a powerful family, and you have no idea what you're doing, but that's OK because you can always look at old interpretations of dreams so you know what to write.

Then again, who's to say if a dream interpretation is correct? Some rumours even say that the master dreams are completely fake. But that can't be true, because if that's true, who really holds the power? Especially when there are rumblings out in the Balkan provinces, and the entirety of Albania, for instance, seems to not have slept a wink in a year? Better make sure to find a good master dream, and act swiftly. Dreams can come true, like the song says.

My 2014 edition says "In these days of media surveillance, Kadare's novel hardly appears less relevant than when it was written in Albania in 1981."

Oh, sweet summer child. Hashtag fake news.