The latest addition to my website is Carmine Abate‘s Il ballo tondo (The Round Dance). Abate comes from the Arbëreshë community, descendants of Albanians who fled the Ottomans between between the 14th and the 18th centuries and settled in Italy. This novel is set in Hora, a small Arbëreshë town in Calabria and for most … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ismail Kadare‘s Kur sunduesit grinden (A Dictator Calls). Kadare had spent some time studying in Moscow where he heard the story about the call Stalin made to Boris Pasternak in 1934 about fellow poet Osip Mandelstam. Mandelstam had been arrested (for writing poems critical of Stalin)and Stalin asked … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ismail Kadare‘s Darka e gabuar (The Fall of the Stone City). This novel is set in the Kadare’s home town of Gjirokastër. The main background is the various occupations endured by the city (and its neighbouring villages) during Kadare’s lifetime. We start with the Italians who invaded it … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ismail Kadare‘s Muzgu i perendive te stepes (Twilight of the Eastern Gods). Kadare spent some time in the 1950s in the Soviet Union, primarily at the Gorky Institute and this is an account of that period. While he loved the big city, it was not all sweetness and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ismail Kadare‘s Kukulla (The Doll). This novel is very different from his usual historical novels, it is an autobiographical novel, focussing on his life but, in particular, on the eponymous doll, who is his fragile mother. We follow her life as she arrives as a seventeen-year old bride, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dritëro Agolli‘s Shkëlqimi dhe rënia e shokut Zylo [The Rise and Fall of Comrade Zylo]. This a witty satire on ambitious government officials. Comrade Demkë, our hero, is a civil servant in the Ministry of Culture, who would like to spend his time writing fiction but is obliged … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dritëro Agolli‘s Komisari Memo (The Bronze Bust). It is nice to know that Ismail Kadare is not the only Albanian novelist translated into English. While this book is not of the same calibre as Kadare, it is still a well-told tale, about Albanian partisans in World War II, … Read more