Ismail Kadare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2007) (Find sources: Ismail Kadare – news, books, scholar)

Ismail Kadare (born January 28, 1936) is a world renowned Albanian writer/novelist. In 1992, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; in 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize and in 2009 the Prince of Asturias Award of Literature. He has divided his time between Albania and France since 1990. He is a Nobel Prize in Literature candidate.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 3 Dissidence 3.1 Arguments for 4 Recognition 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Biography

Ismail Kadare was born in Gjirokastër, Albania in 1936. He first studied at the Faculty of History and Philology at the University of Tirana and later at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. During the terror of the communist regime, Kadaré attacked on totalitarianism and the doctrines of socialist realism with subtle allegories, such as "The Palace of Dreams", a political allegory of totalitarianism, set in the Ottoman Empire capital. Published in 1980, the book was almost immediately banned after its publication. Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They're also pervasively yet obliquely ironic as a result of the need to withstand political scrutiny. Among his most well known books are "Chronicle in stone" (1977), "Broken April" (1978), or "The Concert" (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire.

In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship." Some Albanian émigrés and anti-communist writers claim that, having a privileged status under Enver Hoxha's regime, he was in fact a socialist realism writer and not a dissident, as most people qualify him. When asked, though, he's never claimed to be a Solzhenitsyn, arguing that such a role wasn't readily available under Hoxha's uniquely paranoid and insular regime.

[edit] Works

Works translated into English:

• The General of the Dead Army / Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur (1963; English 1991)
• The Wedding / Dasma (1968)
• The Castle or The Siege / Kështjella (1970; English: 2008)
• Chronicle in Stone / Kronik‘ n‘ gur, Tirana (1971; English: 1987)
• The Great Winter / Dimri i madh (1977)
• Broken April / Prilli i thyer (1978; English: 1990)
• The Three-Arched Bridge / Ura me tri harqe (1978)
• On the Lay of the Knights (1979)
• Doruntine / Kush e solli Doruntinën (1980)
• The Autobiography of the People in Verse / Autobiografia e popullit në vargje (1980; English: 1987)
• The Palace of Dreams / Nënpunësi i pallatit të ëndrrave (1981; English: 1993)
• The Concert / Koncert në fund të dimrit (1988; English: 1994)
• The File on H / Dosja H: roman (1990; English: 1998)
• Albanian Spring / Nga një dhjetor në tjetrin (1991)
• The Pyramid / La Pyramide (1992; English: 1996)
• Three Elegies for Kosovo / Tri këngë zie për Kosovën (1998)
• Spring Flowers, Spring Frost / Lulet e ftohta të marsit (2000; English: 2002)
• The Successor / Pasardhsi: roman (2003; English: 2005)
• Agamemnon's Daughter / Vajza e Agamemnonit (2003; English: 2003)

[edit] Dissidence

Opinions differ on whether Kadare was a dissident or a conformist during the communist period. On several occasions, Kadare has denied that he was a dissident. For instance, in an interview in November 2006 on Albanian "TV Klan", Kadare answered as follows:

Question from Blendi Fevziu: Mister Kadare, have you ever tried to present yourself as dissident, even through others?

Ismail Kadare answering: Absolutely not. Others have said this, and I could not do anything when foreign journalists wrote "The dissident author Ismail Kadare...".

[edit] Arguments for

• Others believe that some of his works, such as The Palace of Dreams, make strong parallels showing the evil of the communist regime.
• In a political and literary environment completely and fiercely controlled by the state, Kadare's writing was for many the only window to anything approaching reality, let alone resistance.
• Having been sentenced to temporary exile, he was forced to produce some works praising the regime and paying lip-service to its "achievements."
• Yet, in other works, Kadare purported to show that Albania's greatness extended beyond the Communist regime and that life could be beautiful without the (failing) Communist ideal.
• Kadare himself has been quoted as saying that he never claimed to be a dissident, that "dissidence was a position no one could occupy, even for a few days, without facing the firing squad. On the other hand, my books themselves constitute a very obvious form of resistance."^[1]
• He has referred to The Great Winter as "the price he had to pay for freedom".

[edit] Recognition

Kadare's works have been published in over forty countries. He has been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature and in 2005 he received the inaugural Man Booker International Prize. On June 2009, Kadare was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Liturature . ^[2] "He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare's is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil" - Independent on Sunday.

[edit] See also

• Albanian literature
• Albanian culture

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Biography, from 'Books and Writers', by Petri Liukkonen