January 28 is the 28th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 337 days remain until the end of the year.
Vermouth is an aromatized fortified wine, flavoured with various botanicals and sometimes colored. The modern versions of the beverage were first produced in the mid to late 18th century in Turin, Italy. While vermouth was traditionally used for medicinal purposes, it was later served as an apéritif, with fashionable cafés in Turin serving it to guests around the clock. In the late 19th century, it became popular with bartenders as a key ingredient for cocktails, such as the martini, the Manhattan, the Rob Roy, and the Negroni. In addition to being consumed as an aperitif or cocktail ingredient, vermouth is sometimes used as an alternative to white wine in cooking.
Brandy is a liquor produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume and is typically consumed as an after-dinner digestif. Some brandies are aged in wooden casks. Others are coloured with caramel colouring to imitate the effect of ageing, and some are produced using a combination of ageing and colouring. Varieties of wine brandy can be found across the winemaking world. Among the most renowned are Cognac and Armagnac from south-western France.
Ismail Kadare was an Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. He was 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 (SUT) in 1957 through merging of five existing institutes of higher education.
Grappa is an alcoholic beverage: a fragrant, grape-based pomace brandy of Italian origin that contains 35 to 60 percent alcohol by volume. Grappa is a protected name in the European Union.
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 International Booker Prize is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize, as the Booker Prize was then known, was announced in June 2004. Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation. It rewarded one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage", and was a recognition of the writer's body of work rather than any one title.
Norman Manea is a Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He lives in the United States, where he is a Professor and writer in residence at Bard College.
David Bellos is a British academic, translator and biographer. He is the Meredith Howland Pyne professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University in the United States, and was director of its translation and intercultural communication programme from 2007 to 2019.
Orujo is a pomace brandy from northern Spain. It is a transparent spirit with an alcohol content over 50%. Its name comes from the expression "aguardiente de orujo".
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (1990–2015) was a British literary award. It was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support of Arts Council England. Beginning in 2011 the administration of the prize was taken over by BookTrust, but retaining the "Independent" in the name. In 2015, the award was disbanded in a "reconfiguration" in which it was merged with the Man Booker International Prize.
The Prix mondial Cino Del Duca is an international literary award. With an award amount of €200,000, it is among the richest literary prizes.
Amaro is an Italian herbal liqueur that is commonly consumed as an after-dinner digestif. It usually has a bitter-sweet flavour, sometimes syrupy, and has an alcohol content between 16% and 40%.
Poli Distillerie is an artisan Grappa distillery solely owned by the Poli family, founded in 1898 in Schiavon, near Bassano del Grappa, in the heart of Veneto, Italy. The distillery is currently run by Jacopo Poli together with his siblings Giampaolo, Barbara and Andrea.
Park Kyong-ni Prize is an international literary award based in South Korea. It was established in 2011 in honor of Park Kyongni, known for her series Toji. The award was founded and sponsored by the Toji Foundation of Culture.
The America Award is a lifetime achievement literary award for international writers. It describes itself as a modest attempt at providing alternatives to the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was first presented in 1994. The award does not entail any prize money. It is sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Educational Project, Inc., in loving memory of Anna Fahrni, and by the publisher Green Integer.
Lulu Wang is a Chinese-born writer who has lived in the Netherlands since 1986. She is a best-selling novelist and also a columnist for Shijie Bolan.
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 sat on the UN Security Council for a two-year term, 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.
