Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare was born in the city of Gjirokastër during the brief period of time after the fall of the Ottoman Empire when Albania was a monarchy, although soon after, Italy invaded, and Albania eventually became a communist country. Kadare’s parents, a post office employee and a homemaker, were both Muslim, although Kadare later came to identify as an atheist. Kadare enjoyed reading Shakespeare at an early age. He traveled and began building a literary reputation in Russia before coming home to Albania in 1960, when Albania broke ties with the U.S.S.R. Kadare worked as a journalist and also wrote poetry and short stories. In 1963, he published his first novel, The General of the Dead Army. Although Kadare writes in Albanian and remains one of the most popular authors in the country, his work started to gain an international reputation in the 1970s and 1980s (with Broken April published in 1978), and his books continue to be translated into different languages. Kadare’s anti-totalitarian novel The Palace of Dreams caused tension between him and the Albanian government, and so since 1990 he has lived as a political exile in France, continuing to write and to receive acclaim for his work.