Incógnito [Fragments from the life of guardians and vice versa]

Shortlisted at National Prize of Novel, Tirana 2016 In a western barracks that reminds one of exile, during an exile that feels like both death in absence and liberation from any present, a young Albanian, raised with a bunker in the yard (nicknamed Incógnito), is assigned as a guard, or simply lives what seems like an ordinary life. For years, while hoping to return to his early love, he guards weapons and ammunition depots, libraries, himself, his memory, and some unknowns, surrounded by superiors and contemporaries who sometimes seem to embody fate itself, in a space and time where a person no longer costs more than a bullet. Incógnito refuses to be alienated, as he knows almost exactly how long the body’s life is – and he feels with precision how long the soul’s life could last. He does not step out of “the shadow,” deciding that it is better to remain “a chosen nobody, than a somebody with only one life.”