©Photo by Gent Shkullaku/AFP
Renowned Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare, whose works defied the oppressive communist regime, passed away at 88, leaving behind a legacy that reshaped Albanian literature and society.
Ismail Kadare, the acclaimed Albanian novelist who used his pen to challenge the oppressive communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, passed away at a hospital in Tirana. He was 88. The cause of death was reported to be a heart attack.
Kadare’s passing has plunged Albania into mourning, with Prime Minister Edi Rama leading the tributes. “We have lost our greatest cultural monument,” Rama wrote on Facebook, thanking the writer for the “extraordinary pleasure” of the worlds, characters, and emotions “he conjured up with the ease of a magician.” Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani also honored Kadare, acknowledging his “remarkable contribution to Albanian and world literature.”
Born in 1936 in Gjirokastra, Albania, Kadare rose to prominence in the 1970s with novels like “Broken April” and “The General of the Dead Army.” Through the use of metaphor and quiet sarcasm, he chronicled the grotesque fate of his country and its people under the paranoid rule of Hoxha, who isolated Albania from the rest of the world.
Despite being branded a traitor by Albania’s communist leaders when he defected to France in 1990, Kadare faced accusations of enjoying a privileged position under Hoxha’s regime. He dismissed these claims with withering irony, asking, “Against whom was Enver Hoxha protecting me? Against Enver Hoxha?”
Kadare’s literary prowess earned him international recognition, including the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005 for his life’s work. Judges praised his storytelling, saying it “goes back to Homer.” While he never received the Nobel Prize in Literature, for which he was tipped several times, many in the literary world believed he deserved the honor. British novelist Nicholas Shakespeare said Kadare “should have been given the Nobel,” while former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ex-right-hand man Alastair Campbell hailed him as “such a great writer.”
Albanian writer Lea Ypi, author of the award-winning memoir Free, paid tribute to Kadare on social media, calling him an “all-time magician of words” and revealing that the first verses she learned to recite were from his works.
Translated into more than 40 languages, Kadare’s prolific writing put Albanian literature on the map internationally. Persida Asllani, head of literature at the University of Tirana, said, “He reshaped both Albanian letters and society thanks to works published during those dark times (of dictatorship) and afterwards. He may have left this world, but his work would go on influencing people.”
In one of his last interviews in October, Kadare told AFP that his writing helped him subvert the repression he suffered under the communist regime. “The hell of communism, like every other hell, was smothering in the worst sense of the term,” he said. “But literature transformed that into a life force, a force which helped you survive and hold your head up and win out over dictatorship. Which is why I am so grateful for literature, because it gives me the chance to overcome the impossible.”
With AFP
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