It`s 28 June 1389, the Field of the Blackbirds. A Christian army made up of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians & Romanians confront an Ottoman army. In ten hours the battle is over, & the Muslims possess the field; an outcome that has haunted the vanquished ever since. 28 June 1989, the Serb Leader Slobodan Milosevic launches his campaign for a fresh massacre of the Albanians, the majority population of Kosovo. In three short narratives, Kadare shows how legends of betrayal & defeat simmered in European civilisation for six hundred years, culminating in the agony of one tiny population at the end of the twentieth century.