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The False Apocalypse: From Stalinism to Capitalism
This unique and disturbing work concerns the events of 1997, a tragic year in the history of post-communist Albania. After the world's most isolated country emerged from Stalinist dictatorship and opened to capitalism, many people fell prey to fraudsters who invited them to invest in so-called 'pyramid schemes'. At the start of 1997, these pyramids crumbled one after another causing wide-spread demonstrations and protests. The conflict became increasingly violent, leading to the collapse of the state and of the country's institutions. Prisons were opened, crowds stormed arms depots, and the country was abandoned to anarchy and gang rule.
Lubonja has chosen to tell this incredible story through a narrative technique that operates on two levels: a third-person narrator, who describes the large-scale events that made international headlines, and the narrative of Fatos Qorri, the author's alter ego, who describes his own dramatic experiences in a personal diary. The book begins with the synopsis of a novel entitled The Sugar Boat that Fatos Qorri intends to write about the spread of a small pyramid scheme luring people to invest supposedly in a sugar business. However, as the major pyramids collapse, real events overtake anything he has imagined and Fatos Qorri finds himself in the midst of a real-life tragedy.
Lubonja has chosen to tell this incredible story through a narrative technique that operates on two levels: a third-person narrator, who describes the large-scale events that made international headlines, and the narrative of Fatos Qorri, the author's alter ego, who describes his own dramatic experiences in a personal diary. The book begins with the synopsis of a novel entitled The Sugar Boat that Fatos Qorri intends to write about the spread of a small pyramid scheme luring people to invest supposedly in a sugar business. However, as the major pyramids collapse, real events overtake anything he has imagined and Fatos Qorri finds himself in the midst of a real-life tragedy.
- GenresPolitics
264 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 10, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 8, 2025
One of the greatest books on politics I've read in a long time, this is part diary, part critical analysis of the events that brought Albania to its knees in 1997. The events unfolding in the period that some call, in my view wrongly, a civil war, are told from the standpoint of an independent thinker and fighter. Fatos Lubonja had been a political prisoner during the Stalinist regime, and in the aftermath of its demise, like other ex-political prisoners like him, remained marginalised from the country’s process of renewal, an outsider excluded from the newly formed political class. And this is one of the many contradictions in the story: the reshuffling of powers once the communist state fell only involved those who, out of opportunism, cowardice, or outright turncoats, had stayed safe from the regime’s censorship. This outsider’s outlook on the country’s political problems gives us readers an excellent bird’s-eye view of events. Lubonja is outside but clearly as passionately involved in the politics of Albania as he was when he had been imprisoned. He doesn’t tell us much about the reasons for his imprisonment, treating it more as a misfortune befalling many than an injustice. But from his prose it is clear that he has lived in confinement long enough to speak the voice of freedom as loudly as one will ever hear.
Lubonja helped set up and participated to a Forum during the uprisings resulting from the financial wipeout of the population’s savings when the government-sponsored pyramid schemes failed. He joined protests, made speeches, ended in riots. The Forum was a cross-party coalition to formulate demands from the government that would address the problems it had contributed to bring upon the population but was now denying all responsibility for. All of it Lubonja carried out with a strong belief in deliberative and participatory democracy, in the right of people to hold powers to account.
Throughout the turbulence, even in the midst of gunfire, he sought solutions to deliver some justice to the victims. And it seems that the greatest challenge when the protests turned violent was to still grant a voice to the discontented; his efforts were constantly ostracised by those, both in government and in the opposition parties, seeking to take advantage of the chaos. The narrative eventually turned a people’s protest against a government into all sorts of fantasies about ethnic conflict or fabricated myths of old communists seeking to regain power. But Lubonja refused to deny rebels their voice, and against all odds defended their right to be included in decision making, despite the disinformation campaigns and power games.
When the south became cut off from events because of the armed insurgency, he drove there with others to try to speak to the people of Vlora. See what was happening on the ground. And his report is a lesson on what happens when change must assert itself through violent means. How easy it can be to manipulate the narrative when journalists become cut off danger zones.
Lubonja has a way about it all that is lucid and incredibly touching. Based mostly in Tirana, the book chronicles events in the present but often pauses to reflect on buildings the author passes by or enters for meetings, and tells the story of Albania’s turbulent pasts via its architecture, witness of multiple incarnations of power over time, standing there as static reminders of permanent movement.
The book charts Lubonja’s hopes and disillusionment. Towards the end, when stopping the violence became a priority over delivering justice, we hear his despair as he sees a newly-skewed reality of exploitation sold under the label of national reconciliation. I quote this passage, because I think it sums up a real problem in many societies, and a shared frustration. He writes:
‘A compromise is a good umbrella but a poor roof. We have an extraordinary ability to unfurl umbrellas like this, often because we are unable to face a storm with courage. But we also have to survive in this little society where everyone knows everyone else, as if we were all related. It seems that neither the law nor justice nor the truth can function in a society like this because our familial relationships distort all these things. A person does something disgraceful and then gives you a smile in your regular café, and you grin back because you know his brother, because he once did you a favour, or because he’s a friend of your friends. The prison guard who beat you comes up and embraces you as if he were your bid brother who thrashed you when you were little, because he was told to do so by his father who is your grandfather’s friend. Your father dies in peace because you are obliged to respect him as your father but also because you behave exactly as he did. This is a society without genuine communication; people do not face up to other people or to themselves, but behave according to a code in which all that counts is who wins, who cheats, and who loses.’
This is a loser’s story of a country that eventually really lost out as a whole.
Lubonja helped set up and participated to a Forum during the uprisings resulting from the financial wipeout of the population’s savings when the government-sponsored pyramid schemes failed. He joined protests, made speeches, ended in riots. The Forum was a cross-party coalition to formulate demands from the government that would address the problems it had contributed to bring upon the population but was now denying all responsibility for. All of it Lubonja carried out with a strong belief in deliberative and participatory democracy, in the right of people to hold powers to account.
Throughout the turbulence, even in the midst of gunfire, he sought solutions to deliver some justice to the victims. And it seems that the greatest challenge when the protests turned violent was to still grant a voice to the discontented; his efforts were constantly ostracised by those, both in government and in the opposition parties, seeking to take advantage of the chaos. The narrative eventually turned a people’s protest against a government into all sorts of fantasies about ethnic conflict or fabricated myths of old communists seeking to regain power. But Lubonja refused to deny rebels their voice, and against all odds defended their right to be included in decision making, despite the disinformation campaigns and power games.
When the south became cut off from events because of the armed insurgency, he drove there with others to try to speak to the people of Vlora. See what was happening on the ground. And his report is a lesson on what happens when change must assert itself through violent means. How easy it can be to manipulate the narrative when journalists become cut off danger zones.
Lubonja has a way about it all that is lucid and incredibly touching. Based mostly in Tirana, the book chronicles events in the present but often pauses to reflect on buildings the author passes by or enters for meetings, and tells the story of Albania’s turbulent pasts via its architecture, witness of multiple incarnations of power over time, standing there as static reminders of permanent movement.
The book charts Lubonja’s hopes and disillusionment. Towards the end, when stopping the violence became a priority over delivering justice, we hear his despair as he sees a newly-skewed reality of exploitation sold under the label of national reconciliation. I quote this passage, because I think it sums up a real problem in many societies, and a shared frustration. He writes:
‘A compromise is a good umbrella but a poor roof. We have an extraordinary ability to unfurl umbrellas like this, often because we are unable to face a storm with courage. But we also have to survive in this little society where everyone knows everyone else, as if we were all related. It seems that neither the law nor justice nor the truth can function in a society like this because our familial relationships distort all these things. A person does something disgraceful and then gives you a smile in your regular café, and you grin back because you know his brother, because he once did you a favour, or because he’s a friend of your friends. The prison guard who beat you comes up and embraces you as if he were your bid brother who thrashed you when you were little, because he was told to do so by his father who is your grandfather’s friend. Your father dies in peace because you are obliged to respect him as your father but also because you behave exactly as he did. This is a society without genuine communication; people do not face up to other people or to themselves, but behave according to a code in which all that counts is who wins, who cheats, and who loses.’
This is a loser’s story of a country that eventually really lost out as a whole.
February 2, 2025
I wanted to like this much more than I actually did. It's an intriguing topic and one that's barely been written about in English, but so much of this was just dry and repetitive. I didn't really feel like I gained much understanding of the psychology behind what happened in Albania in 1996/97, nor indeed how it was all resolved - the book seemed to just stop before the end of the 'story'. The use of the fictionalised version of the author was also a bit of a missed opportunity - at points, it genuinely felt like we'd just got a search-and-replace of 'I' for 'Qorri', rather than doing anything interesting with the technique.
I'm very grateful that Istros Books bring things like this to the English-language market, which would never find a home with another publisher, but this was a bit of a disappointment.
I'm very grateful that Istros Books bring things like this to the English-language market, which would never find a home with another publisher, but this was a bit of a disappointment.
March 20, 2018
Quite a dishonest text. The author presents facts and places from before he was born like it were yesterday. So hard to tell how much is fiction, how much is madness and what was actually something lived by a real person.
July 19, 2015
This book has limited appeal for those who are not as interested as I am about Albania. It deals with three months of turmoil in 1997 which changed the country. Albanians, in early 1997, were beginning to realise that they had been duped into losing much money as a result of unbelievably high return rates promised by the so-called 'pyramid' investment schemes. The West had also been duped into believing the the country's leader Sali Berisha was protecting Albania from lapsing back into the Stalinist dictatorship that its people had to endure for about 50 years.
Fatos Lubonja, who had been twice imprisoned in Enver Hoxha's horrific 'gulags', is a political observer and writer. In this book, he charts the downfall of Sali Berisha and the awful violent chaos that brought it about. His style is easy, informative, and perceptive.
Fatos Lubonja, who had been twice imprisoned in Enver Hoxha's horrific 'gulags', is a political observer and writer. In this book, he charts the downfall of Sali Berisha and the awful violent chaos that brought it about. His style is easy, informative, and perceptive.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews