Ismail Kadare Arshi Pipa David Bellos Popular Books

Ismail Kadare Arshi Pipa David Bellos Biography & Facts

Ismail Kadare (Albanian pronunciation: [ismaˈil kadaˈɾe]; born 28 January 1936) is an Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. He is a leading international literary figure and intellectual. He focused on poetry until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, which made him famous internationally. In 1992, Kadare was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; in 1998, the Herder Prize; in 2005, the inaugural Man Booker International Prize; in 2009, the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts; and in 2015, the Jerusalem Prize. He was awarded the Park Kyong-ni Prize in 2019, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2020. In 1996, France made him a foreign associate of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of France, and in 2016, he was a Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur recipient. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 15 times. Since the 1990s, Kadare has been asked by both major political parties in Albania to become a consensual President of Albania, but has declined. His nominating juror for the Neustadt Prize wrote: "Kadare is the successor of Franz Kafka. No one since Kafka has delved into the infernal mechanism of totalitarian power and its impact on the human soul in as much hypnotic depth as Kadare." His writing has also been compared to that of Nikolai Gogol, George Orwell, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, and Balzac. Living in Albania during a time of strict censorship, Kadare devised cunning stratagems to outwit Communist censors who had banned three of his books, using devices such as parable, myth, fable, folk-tale, allegory, and legend, sprinkled with double-entendre, allusion, insinuation, satire, and coded messages. In 1990, to escape the Communist regime and its Sigurimi secret police he defected to Paris. His works have been published in 45 languages. The New York Times wrote that he was a national figure in Albania comparable in popularity perhaps to Mark Twain in the United States, and that "there is hardly an Albanian household without a Kadare book." Kadare is regarded by some as one of the greatest writers and intellectuals of the 20th and 21st centuries, and as a universal voice against totalitarianism. He is the husband of author Helena Kadare, and the father of United Nations Ambassador, and UN General Assembly Vice President, Besiana Kadare. Early and personal life Ismail Kadare was born in the Kingdom of Albania during the reign of King Zog I. He was born in Gjirokastër, an historic Ottoman Empire fortress mountain city of tall stone houses in southern Albania, a dozen miles from the border with Greece. He lived there on a crooked, narrow street known as "Lunatics' Lane". His parents were Halit Kadare, a post office employee, and Hatixhe Dobi, a homemaker, who had married in 1933 when his mother was 17 years old. On his mother's side of the family, his great-grandfather was a Bejtexhi of the Bektashi Order, known as Hoxhë Dobi. Though he was born into a Muslim family, Kadare himself was an atheist. Three years after Kadare was born, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini's troops invaded Albania and ousted the Albanian King. Italian rule followed. Kadare was nine years old when Italian troops were withdrawn, and the communist-led People's Socialist Republic of Albania was established. Kadare attended primary and secondary schools in Gjirokastër. He then studied Languages and Literature at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana. In 1956, Kadare received a teacher's diploma. He lived in Tirana, Albania, until he became a resident of France in 1990. His Tirana apartment was converted into a museum in 2019, showcasing the work and life of the author. He is married to Albanian author Helena Gushi, and has two daughters. His daughter Besiana Kadare is the Albanian Ambassador to the United Nations, Albania's Ambassador to Cuba, and a Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly for its 75th session. Literary career Early literary career At age 11, Kadare read William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. He recalled years later: "Because I did not yet understand that I could simply purchase it in a bookstore, I copied much of it by hand and took it home. My childhood imagination pushed me to feel like a co-author of the play." He soon became entranced by literature. At age 12, Kadare wrote his first short stories, which were published in the Pionieri (Pioneer) journal in Tirana, a communist magazine for children. In 1954 he published his first collection of poems, Frymëzime djaloshare (Boyish inspirations). In 1957 he published a poetry collection entitled Ëndërrimet (Dreams). At 17, Kadare won a poetry contest in Tirana, which allowed him to travel to Moscow to study at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. He studied literature during the Khrushchev era, doing post-graduate work from 1958 to 1960. His training had as its goal for him to become a communist writer and "engineer of human souls," to help construct a culture of the new Albania. In Moscow he met writers united under the banner of Socialist Realism—a style of art characterized by the idealized depiction of revolutionary communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat. Kadare also had the opportunity to read contemporary Western literature, including works by Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ernest Hemingway. Kadare, however, rejected the canons of Socialist Realism and committed himself internally to writing as opposed to dogmatism. He also cultivated contempt for the nomenklatura, an attitude which, he later wrote, was the product of his youthful arrogance rather than of considered political opposition. During his time in the Soviet Union, Kadare published a collection of poetry in Russian, and in 1959 also wrote his first novel, Qyteti pa reklama (The City Without Signs), a critique of socialist careerism in Albania. Kadare returned home in October 1960 on Albanian orders, before Albania's breaking of political and economic ties with the USSR. He lived for the next 30 years in Tirana, in an apartment which now houses the Ismail Kadare House museum and archives. He worked as a journalist, became editor-in-chief of the literary periodical Les Lettres Albanaises (Albanian Letters; published simultaneously in Albanian and French), and then contributed to the literary review Drita for five years, while embarking on a literary career of his own. At that time Kadare had a reputation for poetry. In 1961 he published a volume of poetry entitled Shekulli im (My Century). His work was particularly popular with Albanian youth. His future wife Helena, then a schoolgirl, wrote a fan letter to the young writer, which eventually led to their marriage in 1963. Kadare wrote one of his earliest pieces in the 1960s, a poem entitled "The Princess Argjiro." Locally inspired, the poem transforms the centuries-old myth of the legendary 15th century Princess Argjiro, who wa.... Discover the Ismail Kadare Arshi Pipa David Bellos popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ismail Kadare Arshi Pipa David Bellos books.