Albanese lente: Het afscheid van een dictatuur

by Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare, Albania's foremost literary figure, went into self-imposed exile to France in October 1990. The "Albanian Spring" had proved no more substantial than the "Prague Spring" many years earlier. Exhaulted and revered under the regime of Enver Hoxha, Kadare, nontheless, was pleased to witness the changes taking place in Eastern Europe, and felt that at last true openness and democracy would come to Albania. His attempts to promote it and his ultimate recognition that it would not happen is the basis of this book. Several times short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ismail Kadare has had several of his books translated into English, including "Chronicle in Stone", "Doruntine", "Broken April" and "The Three-Arched Bridge".

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 1991

About the author

Ismail Kadare (also spelled Kadaré) was an Albanian novelist and poet. He has been a leading literary figure in Albania since the 1960s. He focused on short stories until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army. In 1996 he became a lifetime member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of France. In 1992, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; in 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, in 2009 the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts, and in 2015 the Jerusalem Prize. He has divided his time between Albania and France since 1990. Kadare has been mentioned as a possible recipient for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. His works have been published in about 30 languages.

Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokastër, in the south of Albania. His education included studies at the University of Tirana and then the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow, a training school for writers and critics.

In 1960 Kadare returned to Albania after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union, and he became a journalist and published his first poems.

His first novel, The General of the Dead Army, sprang from a short story, and its success established his name in Albania and enabled Kadare to become a full-time writer.

Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They are obliquely ironic as a result of trying to withstand political scrutiny. Among his best known books are Chronicle in Stone (1977), Broken April (1978), and The Concert (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.

In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a long time I had been wanting to read this book by Albania's best known author, Ismail Kadaré. Although it was available on second-hand book websites, it was usually priced too highly. However, eventually I found a reasonably priced copy on e-bay. The book is highly priced on the whole because few copies are available. The book's rarity does not surprise me. Although it is extremely interesting, it is not of the usual high standard that I associate with this author.

The book is divided into 3 sections of unequal length. The first section deals with the author's dealings with President Ramiz Alia, the successor to Albania's tyrannical leader Enver Hoxha. It is clear from what was written that Ramiz Alia was prepared to listen to criticisms of the Communist regime coming from the country's world famous author. However, he did not always agree with Kadaré. After an exchange of correspondence, Kadaré decided in 1990 that the time had come to leave Albania. He said that his 'exile' would be temporary, and that he would return to his native land only after true democracy was established there.

The second and briefest section contains Kadaré's critical letter and Alia's reply to it. Having read the latter, I can well understand why Kadaré felt that it was time to make a move.

The third and in my view most interesting part of the book is an analysis of the way totalitarian regimes try to wear down their subjects to the point that they are almost dehumanised. Kadaré explains why he thinks that this can never be achieved; there is a spark of humanity that is inextinguishable. Curiously enough in Albania at the beginning of the 1990s its is the regimes inability to eradicate traditional funereal rites, rather than the abolition of religion or of the existence of lawyers, that marked the beginning of its ultimate downfall.

I am not certain whether this book would have grabbed my attention had I not already had an obsessive interest in Albania and the Albanians. Maybe, it was defects in the translation style that put me off enjoying it, but it may have been Kadaré's original text that was the cause of my disappointment with this book that I had long wanted to read.

[João RS · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work is a photobook from the 1990s that pairs the haunting photography of the Marubi studio in Shkodra with text by Ismail Kadare. Together, they trace the story of Albania from the Ottoman era to the fall of communism, offering a rare visual and literary chronicle of a nation in transformation.
At the heart of the book are the images from three generations of the Marubi family in Shkodra — documenting everyday life, political change, and cultural identity from the 19th century to 1940s.
One of the photos that stroke me the most shows Enver Hoxha, long before he seized power, standing on a balcony during a public celebration. Later, all others were removed from the image, leaving only Hoxha — a chilling depiction of his future as Albania’s dictator.

[Boukhalfa Inal Ahmed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cet ouvrage n'est pas un roman mais plutôt une archive du temps lorsque la dictature en Albanie était en place. le sous-titre du livre l'exprime bien: chroniques, lettres, réflexions. La lecture est intéressante, elle se lit facilement expose la position de Kadaré durant cette période.
Je dois avouer que je manque de recul et la lecture ancienne de cet ouvrage n'aide pas à la critique objective de ce petit livre de poche.

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting observations, letters and thoughts from the author as Albania's so called communist system (really a Stalinist Hoxha mix) fell apart in the late 1980s and into 1990. It felt like being there, and I read most of it in Tirana, which probably helped, in that respect.

[Femke van der Zaag · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een interessante inkijk in de dubbele en ingewikkelde relatie van een intellectuele schrijver in een totalitair communistische dictatuur.

[Maarten Vidal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Een mindere Kadare, geen roman maar wel een apologetisch boek over zijn rol tijdens de communistische dictatuur en zijn vlucht uit Albanië in de nadagen daarvan. Daardoor ook nogal gedateerd.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, which I found quite by chance in a second-hand book store, contains some photographs taken in the second half of the 19th century and the first 40 years of the 20th, which, in their own right, are of the highest artistic quality. However, in addition to being artistic, they are of great historical interest as they show aspects of life in Albania, one of the obscurer corners of Europe.

Many of the earlier photographs are clearly posed in studios, but some of the later ones, such as the marriage of King Zog and Geraldine Apponyi, are true reportage.

All of the pictures were taken by members of the Marubi family, who moved from their native Piacenza (in Italy) to Albania where they become the country's first professional photographers. The pictures are accompanied by a brief but informative text written by Albania's leading novelist Ismail Kadaré.

As this book is hard to obtain, I have reproduced a number of its illustrations on my blog page: http://yameyamey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/...