Having heard nothing for three years, Doruntine is one day suddenly awoken by Constantine and taken back on horseback to her mother.

When her mother opens the door, both women fall into a state of shock, as Constantine has been dead for three years.

The book received international positive reviews praising Kadare's writing style and story-telling abilities.

Alain Bosquet wrote a positive review praising the book:"The great modern Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare, has given us a masterpiece, Doruntine, at once romantic and contemporary in spirit.

Here is a spell-binding new literary mode, with its suspense, its alertness, its suggestiveness, its intensely local flavor—an age-old legend transformed into a splendid fable".