The French-Albanian writer Ismail Kadare has died. He died at the age of 88 in a hospital in Tirana, as his French publisher confirmed. He was considered one of the most prominent contemporary Albanian-language authors, has been translated into more than 45 languages and was repeatedly considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature for many years.
Kadare has published over 50 works, which have been translated into over 30 languages. In Germany, the small, modest and graceful-looking writer became known through his books “The Fortress”, “November of a Capital” and “The Sandbox”, among others.
In 2015, three of his new stories were published in German under the title “The Veiled Caravan”. In 2017, his novel “The Twilight of the Steppe Gods” about post-Stalin Moscow was published here.
His novels are about the myths, identity and history of a country and a people, whose chronicler he chose to be. In his publications he warns against foreign rule and describes the dangers of a “superstate” designed for self-preservation. His central theme: life under a dictatorship. Over the years, this focus has repeatedly led to him being banned from publishing.
In the crossfire of criticism
Kadare was born on the night of January 28, 1936 in Gjirokastra in southern Albania; biographies disagree about his exact birthday (27th or 28th?). He studied in Tirana, then at the Gorky Institute in Moscow. He made his breakthrough in 1964 with the novel “The General of the Dead Army,” which was made into a film in France with Marcello Mastroianni and Michel Piccoli.
Kadare’s political role in Albania was not always uncontroversial. He was criticized for his support of the communist system under the dictator Enver Hoxha, who ruled the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania from 1944 to 1985.
The fact that he fled to France in 1990, when the regime of Hodja’s successor Ramiz Alija promised freedom of travel and democratization, seemed illogical to many. He then lived in Paris and the Albanian capital Tirana. Throughout his life he refused requests to run for president of his home country.