Ismail Kadare is an Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. He is a leading international literary figure and intellectual. He focused on poetry until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, which made him famous internationally.
The University of Tirana is a public university located at the central borough of Tirana 10 in Tirana, Albania. It was established as the State University of Tirana in 1957 through merging of five existing institutes of higher education.
Mehmet Ismail Shehu was an Albanian communist politician who served as the 23rd Prime Minister of Albania from 1954 to 1981. As an acknowledged military tactician, without whose leadership the communist partisans may well have failed in their battle to win Albania for the Marxist-Leninist cause, Shehu exhibited an ideological understanding and work ethic that singled him out for rapid promotion in the communist party. Mehmet Shehu shared power with Enver Hoxha from the end of the Second World War. According to official Albanian government sources, he committed suicide on December 18, 1981, after which his family was arrested. Persistent rumors remain, however, that Shehu was actually murdered on orders from Hoxha.
The Party of Labour of Albania, sometimes referred to as the Albanian Workers' Party (AWP), was the ruling and sole legal party of Albania during the communist period (1945–1991). It was founded on 8 November 1941 as the Communist Party of Albania but changed its name in 1948. The party was dissolved on 13 June 1991 and succeeded by the Socialist Party of Albania. For most of its existence, the party was dominated by its First Secretary, Enver Hoxha, who was also the de facto leader of Albania.
Albanian literature stretches back to the Middle Ages and comprises those literary texts and works written in Albanian. It may also refer to literature written by Albanians in Albania, Kosovo and the Albanian diaspora particularly in Italy. Albanian occupies an independent branch within the Indo-European family and does not have any other closely related language. The origin of Albanian is not entirely known, but it may be a successor of the ancient Illyrian language.
The File on H. is a novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It first appeared in Albanian in 1981 under the title Dosja H.
David Bellos is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton's Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication from its inception in 2007 until July 1, 2019.
Arcade Publishing is an independent trade publishing company that started in 1988 in New York, USA. It publishes American and world fiction and nonfiction.
Bilal Xhaferri was an Albanian writer and political dissident against the Albanian communist regime. He is seen as the representative poet of the Albanian Chameria.
The Siege is a novel by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, first published in 1970 in Tirana as Kështjella. It tells about the Albanian-Ottoman war during the time of Skanderbeg. It was translated into French by Jusuf Vrioni and then from French into English by David Bellos under the title The Siege. Bellos in his afterword suggests that the book is patterned after Marin Barleti's work The Siege of Shkodra. The narrator of the novel is however not an Albanian fighting for Skanderbeg but a member of the besieging Ottoman army.
Chronicle in Stone is a novel by Albanian author Ismail Kadare. First published in Albanian in 1971, and 16 years later in English translation, it describes life in a small Albanian city during World War II.
The League of Writers and Artists of Albania is a non-profit organization founded with the goal of promoting and advancing the literary and artistic creativity of Albanian writers and artists, as well as to assess and reassess the finest works of art in the following disciplines: music, painting, sculpture and literature. The organization actively promotes the originality and inventiveness of emerging young talents, while preserving Albanian traditional and modern values, in line with the best examples of literary and artistic values throughout the world.
Kasëm Trebeshina was an Albanian member of national resistance during World War II part of the National Liberation Movement, an actor, translator, communist prosecutor and writer. He was one of the founders of the notorious communist secret police Sigurimi.
Helena "Elena" Kadare is an Albanian screenwriter, translator and author of short stories and novels. One of the latter, 1970's Një lindje e vështirë, is the first novel by a woman to have been published in Albania. A Woman from Tirana (1990) is the novel of Kadare's that is perhaps her most widely read.
Besiana Kadare is an Albanian diplomat. She served as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Representative of Albania to the United Nations, a Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly for its 75th session, and Albania's Ambassador to Cuba. Albania will be sitting on the UN Security Council for a two-year term, in 2022–23. She was formerly from 2011 to 2016 Albania's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Permanent Delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris. She is the daughter of writers Helena Kadare and Ismail Kadare.
The Palace of Dreams is a 1981 novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Set ostensibly in the Ottoman Empire, but in a deliberately imprecise past shaded by myth and intended to represent the modern totalitarian state, The Palace of Dreams follows the rapid rise of Mark-Alem, a young Ottoman Albanian related to the powerful Köprülü family, within the bureaucratic regime of the title palace, a shady ministry whose objective is to gather, examine and interpret the dreams of the empire's subjects in order to uncover the master-dreams, which are believed to shell the future destiny of the Sultan and the state.
The Successor is a 2003 novel by the Albanian writer and inaugural International Man Booker Prize winner Ismail Kadare. It is the second part of a diptych of which the first part is the novella Agamemnon's Daughter. The diptych is ranked by many critics among the author's greatest works.
The Blinding Order is a short novel written by Ismail Kadare in 1984 and published in 1991, shortly after the collapse of the hoxhaist regime in Albania. Set in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, The Blinding Order is a parable about the use of terror by authoritarian regimes, and it is linked through its main subplot to the author's banned 1981 novel The Palace of Dreams.
Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It was published in installments in Albania between 1962 and 1978, and published in full in 1981 in the French translation of Jusuf Vrioni. The English translation by David Bellos, published in 2014, was made from Vrioni's French.
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost is a 2000 novel by Albanian author Ismail Kadare set in the 1990s when feuding and vendetta had returned to the country after the fall of the communist regime. The English translation by David Bellos was first published by The Harvill Press in 2002, and then by Vintage Books in 2003. It was translated not directly from Albanian, but from the French translation by Jusuf Vrioni.
