Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare (born January 28, 1936, Gjirokastër, Albania—died July 1, 2024, Tirana, Albania) was an Albanian novelist and poet whose work explored his country’s history and culture and gained an international readership.

Kadare, whose father was a post office employee, attended the University of Tirana. He later went to Moscow to study at the Gorky Institute of World Literature. Upon returning to Albania in 1960, he worked as a journalist and then embarked on a literary career. He endured periods of controversy in his native country during the long rule of Enver Hoxha, whose dictatorial government Kadare alternately praised and criticized. In 1990, feeling threatened by the government and fearing arrest, Kadare defected to France.

Kadare first attracted attention in Albania as a poet, but it was his prose works that brought him worldwide fame. Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur (1963; The General of the Dead Army [film 1983]), his best-known novel, was his first to achieve an international audience. It tells the story of an Italian general on a grim mission to find and return to Italy the remains of his country’s soldiers who died in Albania during World War II. Among Kadare’s other novels dealing with Albanian history are Kështjella (1970; The Castle or The Siege), a recounting of the armed resistance of the Albanian people against the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century, and Dimri i madh (1977; “The Great Winter”), which depicts the events that produced the break between Albania and the Soviet Union in 1961. Kronikë në gur (1971; Chronicle in Stone) is an autobiographical novel that is as much about Kadare’s childhood in wartime Albania as about the town of Gjirokastër itself.

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The novel Ura me tri harqe (1978; The Three-Arched Bridge), set in medieval Albania, received wide critical acclaim. Muzgu i perëndive të stepës (1978; Twilight of the Eastern Gods) is a roman à clef about Kadare’s time at the Gorky Institute. His subsequent works of fiction included Nëpunësi i pallatit të ëndrrave (1981; The Palace of Dreams), Dosja H. (1990; The File on H.), and Piramida (1995; The Pyramid). Tri këngë zie për Kosovën (1999; Three Elegies for Kosovo, or Elegy for Kosovo) comprises three stories about a 14th-century battle between Balkan leaders and the Ottoman Empire. Lulet e ftohta të marsit (2000; Spring Flowers, Spring Frost) tells the story of a painter in postcommunist Albania, and Pasardhësi (2003; The Successor) examines the fate of one of Hoxha’s presumed successors. Darka e gabuar (2008; The Fall of the Stone City) traces the lives of two doctors following a series of strange events linked to the entry of Nazi troops into Gjirokastër—still reeling from the recent Italian occupation—in 1943. In Aksidenti (2010; The Accident) a researcher tries to shed light on the mysterious backgrounds of a couple killed in a car accident. The autobiographical Kukulla (2015; The Doll) was based on Kadare’s relationship with his mother.

Among Kadare’s nonfiction volumes are Eskili, ky humbës i madh (1988; “Aeschylus, This Great Loser”), which examines the affinity between Albanian and Greek cultures from antiquity to modern times, and Nga një dhjetor në tjetrin (1991; “From One December to Another”; Eng. trans. Albanian Spring: The Anatomy of Tyranny), which expresses his views on Albanian politics and government between 1944 and 1990.

The themes of Kadare’s works, which often draw heavily on his own life, include Albanian history, politics, and folklore, blood-feud tradition, and ethnicity. His fiction has elements of romanticism, realism, and surrealism. He has been likened to the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko for dissenting from state-imposed guidelines for literature and to the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, in part because of their common interest in the grotesque and the surreal. Kadare was granted membership in the French Academy in 1996 and was later made an officer of the French Legion of Honour. In 2005 he became the first winner of the Man Booker International Prize. Kadare’s other honors included the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (2020).