The Kanun, the code of laws that dictates the life of the people of the High Plateau in Broken April, is not a literary construction created by Kadaré for the purposes of the novel. Rather, it is a real legal system that has been practiced in rural Albania for several centuries. Th Kanun plays a major role in the plot of Broken April, and while Kadaré describes the code in both theory and in practice, it is nonetheless helpful to have some extra background knowledge of its history and contents.
According to scholar Robert Elsie, the full name for the Kanun is the "Kanun of Leke Dukađinija," after a man who lived in the 15th century and who is thought to have compiled the Kanun; however, there is little remaining information about the origins of the Code or of the like of Dukađinija and it was not until 1898 that Franciscan priest Shtjefën Gjeçovi Kryeziu became the first person to collect the Kanun in written form. Still, it is known that for centuries, as Elsie writes, "this originally code of law governed social behaviour and almost every other facet of life in the isolated and otherwise lawless terrain of the northern highlands" of Albania, the region in which Broken April is set (146-147). While it varied in its practice, Elsie notes that "in its definitive form, the Kanun had twelve chapters: church; the family; marriage; house; livestock and property; work; transfer of property; the spoken word; honour; damage; the law regarding crimes; judicial law; exemptions and exceptions" (147).
As Kadaré documents in Broken April, one of the most notable facets of the Kanun is the regulation of the practice of blood feuding. According to scholar Sandra F. Joireman, "the correct practice of blood feuds takes up a significant portion of the Kanun" (241). In the early twentieth century, these blood feuds intensified to the point that, in the words of Elsie, "decimated the population of the northern tribes in the early twentieth century" (147). According to Joireman, however, the exacerbation of the blood feuds is based on a fundamental misreading of the Kanun: whereas the Kanun stipulates that vengeance can be taken on a perpetrator of a crime, this has, in practice, been extended to the families of perpetrators. As a result, young children have been killed out of vengeance.
During the Communist rule of Enver Hoxha–the period during which Broken April was written–blood feuds were made illegal and the influence of the Kanun was diminished. After the collapse of the Communist government in 1991, however, the practice of blood feuding resurged. According to journalist Dan Bilefsky, some 9,500 people were killed in blood feuds in the region between 1991 and 2008. Given the resurgence of this tragic practice, Kadaré incisive and nuanced portrayal of the Kanun and the blood feuds is as timely now as when it was first released.
