[1][2] He was encouraged to write it by Drago Siliqi, literary critic and director of the state-owned publishing house Naim Frashëri.

As they go deeper into the Albanian countryside they find they are being followed by another general who is looking for the bodies of German soldiers killed in World War II.

Like his Italian counterpart, the German struggles with a thankless job looking for remains to take back home for burial, and questions the value of such attempts at national face saving.

Richard Eder of The New York Times stated that "Kadare advances wryly and dryly into the darkness... [he] doesn't do messages; he brings them to lethal life".

The novel inspired three films: Luciano Tovoli's The General of the Dead Army starring Michel Piccoli and Marcello Mastroianni as the Italian General, Dhimitër Anagnosti's The Return of the Dead Army (Albanian: Kthimi i Ushtrise se Vdekur) - a 1989 Albanian film starring Bujar Lako, and Bertrand Tavernier’s Life and Nothing But (La Vie et rien d’autre) starring Philippe Noiret.