Who is ismail kadare

The weather in Kadaria is always ghastly, and it makes the climate of Scotland seem by comparison as balmy as the Italian Riviera. They are not plausible settings of any actual scene, but key signatures to the mood, which tells you that this is not going to be a happy story.

But they do much more than that: they tell you that there are not going to be any blonde maidens sitting astride gleaming tractors bringing in the sun-ripened harvest of grain, and that the work will have no truck with the norms imposed on Albanian literature by Soviet doctrines of socialist realism. It is really a very sly way of carving out a uniquely critical position within a society where criticism was, shall we say, seriously underappreciated.

The borderline between being able to see clearly and not being able to see clearly is never clear-cut.

Kadare constantly nudges us toward doubting the difference between waking and dreaming, and makes us reflect on the ways in which life is like a dream, and in what way nightmares are just like life. Finally, in case all this scares you away, since you may not be instantly attracted to foggy minds wandering in and out of dreamscapes where it rains and snows, I must add, and indeed insist, that Kadare is really quite funny.

You have to let yourself plunge deep into this parallel universe, but once you do, you discover a cunning, wry kind of humor that is both situational and verbal. Kadare has said on more than one occasion that his readers and critics should not pay too much attention to context. It is a striking achievement, and it also means that each story you read is not just that story—it is a contribution to your memory and understanding of other stories you have read, and it adds to the overall feeling that you are indeed in a different world that is weirdly like a dream.

In English, alas, only about one third of it is available at the present time. That is a pretty good reason for learning French, if you balk at the effort needed to learn Albanian well enough to read this great master of modern European literature. David Bellos is a professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University and has translated numerous authors from French.

Reflections on Palestinian Identity, by Ghada Karmi. Kadare would approve of. Submission of reader comments is restricted to NY Sun sustaining members only. If you are not yet a member, please click here to join. If you are already a member, please log in here:. Belated though this comment may be, what ensures ones place in high esteem is that one isn't easily positioned, nor categorized.

This article emphasizes that important value. Well researched and articulated. A good piece of journalism. He is laureat of Nobel Prize for more then 10 years. Kadare is the best albanian writer ever. Read his books, you will beleave me. Has he been asked about that? How was he approached, with depression-causing pills or in gentelmen-like meetings with "voices" in cafes in Tirana and elsewhere? Internet is still young, an originally military invention opened to public recently.

Before that, no man could utilise information in Internet-like scales or magnitudes. Kadare writes literary NOT chicklit fiction, mr Kirsch!

Kadare wisely managed to escape the merciless hoof of the totalitarian regime in Albanian. If he didn't, Albania would have lost him, who made Albania known throughout the world, and his work. All of us know far too little as we go global, about the cultures of countries with which we trade.

There is precious little effort by intelligence agencies and departments of foreign affairs around the world put into learning languages and customs of those on whom they report. And the canon of English literature is very fine indeed, but do we know more than a handful of authors of the best writing from other cultures?

I think not. Translation, especially of literary works is fiendishly challenging, so it's not surprising, but regrettable that much of the best literary work remains unrecognised in the west. Albania is a specially difficult country to understand because its language is so different and it was virtually cut off for so long.

The communist legacy, first of Maoists and then Stalinists is complicated because undoubtedly the latter stamped out to at least to a certain extent some very unsavoury practices based on codes requiring an endless cycling of blood feuds requiring vengeance and destoyed some of the key centres administering them.

Like everything else, there are two sides of that debate to be considered. And this is why he should win the Nobel Prize in Literature. English, James. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Kirsh, Adam. Wood, James. She is currently preparing her dissertation on the effects of immigration on nationalism in the works of contemporary Yugoslav immigrant writers in Western Europe and the United States.

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Pandemic Dispatches. Sound It Out. Add New. Fiction , Historical Fiction , Poetry. Combine Editions. Ismail Kadare Average rating: 3. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Ismail Kadare ,. Arshi Pipa translator ,.