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. Over a career shaped by censorship under Albania’s communist dictatorship, Kadare emerged as one of the most widely read European writers of his generation, achieving global recognition for novels such as The General of the Dead Army (1963) and The Palace of Dreams (1981). He went into exile in France in 1990 and later received major international honors, including the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and election to the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1996.

Life and education

Kadare was born in the Albanian city of Gjirokastër, and he shared his birthplace with Albania’s communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, who would rule the country for 40 years after World War II. As a young boy, Kadare once chanced upon a script of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth and copied some of the text by hand—an experience he later recalled as having felt, in childhood, like coauthoring the play. Years later his historical novel Koncert në fund të dimrit (1988; The Concert) would feature ghosts appearing in ceremonies. According to critics, these scenes resemble the banquet scene in Macbeth.

Kadare attended the University of Tirana and studied at the faculty of philology and history In 1958 he went to Moscow to study at the Gorky Institute of World Literature. Kadare was exposed to the works of authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus during his years at the institute.

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A Study of Poetry

In 1961, following the breakdown of ties between Albania and the U.S.S.R., Kadare was forced to return home. 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.

Literary censorship in Albania

Kadare wrote under a highly centralized literary system in which all publishing and cultural activity was controlled by the communist regime of Enver Hoxha and censorship was enforced by the secret police. In a period marked by political repression, bans on religion, restrictions on foreign contact, and the imprisonment or execution of dissenting intellectuals, Kadare continued to publish by employing metaphor and indirect critique, though his work was frequently attacked for deviating from officially sanctioned styles.

Fiction

Kadare first attracted attention in Albania as a poet through volumes such as Frymëzimet djaloshare (1954; “Youthful Inspiration: Lyrics”), Ëndërrimet (1957; “Dreams”), Shekulli im (1961; “My Age: Poems”), and Motive me diell (1968; “Solar Motifs: Poems”).

His prose works 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. The novel was criticized for Kadare’s non-adherence to Socialist Realism, a style of art sanctioned in the Soviet Union between 1932 and the mid-1980s, which required writers to glorify the proletariat (workers), denounce capitalists, and promote socialist ideals. However, because the work was translated into French and enjoyed popularity there, Kadare escaped persecution under Hoxha’s regime. Hoxha, himself an admirer of French culture, saw in Kadare’s success an opportunity to present Albanian literature on the international stage.

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Among Kadare’s other novels dealing with Albanian history are Kështjella (1970; “The Castle”; Eng. trans. 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.

The novel Ura me tri harqe (1978; The Three-Arched Bridge), is set in medieval Albania, during the Ottoman expansion, and uses the construction of a bridge as an allegory of modernization imposed on a traditional society. The bridge comes to represent progress, but its completion depends on coercion, sacrifice, and the silencing of local resistance. Drawing on Greek and Balkan legends, the novel incorporates the motif of human immurement. The bridge’s collapse in the novel is prevented by the live entombment of a local worker, Murrash Zenebisha.

Muzgu i perëndive të stepës (1978; Twilight of the Eastern Gods) is a roman à clef (a novel that portrays real people or events under fictional names) about Kadare’s time at the Gorky Institute.

Nëpunësi i pallatit të ëndrrave (1981; The Palace of Dreams) is set within an imagined Ottoman bureaucratic institution whose function is to collect and interpret citizens’ dreams, an allegory of dictatorship and political control. The novel satirizes the workings of this institution—closely associated with archives, surveillance, and the identification of plots against the state—through the concept of the “Master-Dreams.” Elements of dissent detected in such dreams are treated as evidence of conspiracy and justification for repression.

In Albania, The Palace of Dreams provoked severe official condemnation, including public censure, accusations of anti-socialism, and a Party-organized plenary session intended to humiliate Kadare.

His subsequent works of fiction included Dosja H. (1990; The File on H.), and Piramida (1995; The Pyramid).

Tri këngë zie për Kosovën (1999; “Three Elegies for Kosovo”; Eng. trans. 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.

Nonfiction

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.

Themes

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.

Legacy and honors

Kadare was granted membership in the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (L’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques) in 1996 and was later made a grand officer of the French Legion of Honour. In 2005 he became the first winner of the Man Booker International Prize. Kadare requested that his translator into English David Bellos share the award with him, a decision that helped establish the prize’s current practice of honoring both authors and translators. His other honors included the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (2020).