Ismail Kadare (Albanian: [ismaˈil kadaˈɾe]; January 28, 1936 – July 1, 2024) was an Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. He was a respected international writer and thinker, known for his poetry until he wrote his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, which brought him worldwide fame.
Kadare is considered by some to be one of the most important writers and thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was also seen as a strong voice against unfair government control. While living in Albania during a time when the government controlled what people could read and write, Kadare used creative methods to avoid having his books banned. He used stories, myths, and hidden meanings in his writing to express ideas that the government tried to stop. In 1990, to escape the Communist government and its secret police force, Kadare moved to Paris. From the 1990s onward, both major political parties in Albania asked him to become president, but he refused. In 1996, France honored him as a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. In 2016, he received the title of Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur.
Kadare was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 15 times. In 1992, he won the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. In 1998, he received the Herder Prize. In 2005, he was the first winner of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2009, he was honored with the Prince of Asturias Award for Arts. In 2015, he won the Jerusalem Prize. In 2019, he received the Park Kyong-ni Prize, and in 2020, he was given the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A person who evaluated him for the Neustadt Prize said, "Kadare is like Franz Kafka. No one since Kafka has explored the effects of unfair government power on people’s lives as deeply as Kadare." His writing has also been compared to works by Nikolai Gogol, George Orwell, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, and Balzac. His books have been translated into 45 languages. The New York Times said he was a well-known figure in Albania, similar to Mark Twain in the United States, and that "few Albanian homes do not have a book by Kadare."
Kadare was married to author Helena Kadare and was the father of Besiana Kadare, who works as an ambassador and vice president of the United Nations General Assembly. In 2023, he was given citizenship of Kosovo by President Vjosa Osmani.
Early life and education
Ismail Kadare was born on January 28, 1936, in the Kingdom of Albania during the rule of King Zog I. He was born in Gjirokastër, an old Ottoman fortress city in the mountains of southern Albania, near the border with Greece. He lived on a narrow, winding street called Lunatics' Lane.
His parents were Halit Kadare, who worked at the post office, and Hatixhe Dobi, a homemaker. They married in 1933 when she was 17. On his mother’s side, his great-grandfather was a Bejtexhi of the Bektashi Order, named Hoxhë Dobi. Although Kadare was born into a Muslim family, he did not believe in any religion.
Three years after Kadare was born, Italian leader Benito Mussolini’s forces invaded Albania and removed the king. Italy controlled the country until the Italian forces left when Kadare was nine years old. At that time, a communist government called the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania was created.
Kadare studied in primary and secondary schools in Gjirokastër. Later, he studied Languages and Literature at the Faculty of History and Philology at the University of Tirana. In 1956, he earned a teaching certificate. He later studied at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow before returning to Tirana in 1960. He lived in Tirana until moving to France in 1990.
Literary career
At age 11, Kadare read William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. He remembered later: "I did not know I could buy it in a bookstore, so I copied parts of it by hand and took it home. My imagination made me feel like I was helping write the play."
He soon became interested in books. At 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 another poetry collection, Ëndërrimet (Dreams).
At 17, Kadare won a poetry contest in Tirana, which let him travel to Moscow to study at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. He studied literature during the Khrushchev era, completing post-graduate work from 1958 to 1960. His training aimed to make him a communist writer and "engineer of human souls," helping build a new culture in Albania. In Moscow, he met writers who followed Socialist Realism, a style that showed idealized communist values, such as the freedom of workers. He also read Western writers like Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ernest Hemingway. He did not follow Socialist Realism’s rules and chose to write freely instead of following strict ideas. He also disliked the nomenklatura, a feeling he later said came from his youth, not political beliefs. During his time in the Soviet Union, Kadare published a poetry collection in Russian and wrote his first novel, Qyteti pa reklama (The City Without Signs), which criticized socialist careerism in Albania.
Kadare returned to Albania in October 1960, before Albania ended its ties with the USSR. He lived in Tirana for 30 years, in an apartment now part of the Ismail Kadare House museum and archives. He worked as a journalist, became editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Les Lettres Albanaises (Albanian Letters), and later wrote for Drita for five years while developing his own writing career.
At that time, Kadare was known for his poetry. In 1961, he published a poetry collection called Shekulli im (My Century). His work was popular with Albanian youth. His future wife, Helena, then a schoolgirl, wrote a fan letter to him, which led to their marriage in 1963.
In the 1960s, Kadare wrote a poem called "The Princess Argjiro," inspired by a centuries-old myth about Princess Argjiro, who was said to have jumped off Gjirokastër Castle with her child to avoid capture by the Ottomans. The poem was criticized, and an official report said he made historical and ideological mistakes. Kadare was implicitly criticized for not following socialist literary rules.
In 1962, Kadare published an excerpt from his first novel as a short story titled Coffeehouse Days in a communist youth magazine. It was banned soon after, adding to his reputation for "decadence."
In 1963, at 26, Kadare published his novel The General of the Dead Army, about an army general and a priest sent to Albania 20 years after World War II to find the remains of fallen Italian soldiers and return them to Italy. The novel was criticized by Albanian writers for not following socialist ideals and for its dark tone. It contrasted with other Albanian writers who praised the Communist revolution. The novel inspired three films: Luciano Tovoli’s 1983 The General of the Dead Army (Italy), Bertrand Tavernier’s 1989 Life and Nothing But (France), and Dhimitër Anagnosti’s 1989 The Return of the Dead Army (Albania). Though it is his best-known novel, Kadare considered it "good literature" but not his best work.
In 1964, Kadare wrote Përse mendohen këto male (What Are These Mountains Thinking About?). His next short novel, The Monster (Përbindëshi), published in 1965, was called "decadent" and banned, marking his second ban.
By the mid-1960s, the cultural censorship that had eased earlier ended, and conditions changed. In 1967, Albania started its own Cultural Revolution. Kadare was exiled for two years to Berat, a rural area, to learn about life with peasants and workers. Two Albanian dramatists were sentenced to eight years in prison each. Albanian writers and artists received little support from the outside world.
The General of the Dead Army became Kadare’s first major success outside Albania. A French translation by Isuf Vrioni, published in 1970 by Albin Michel in Paris, led to Kadare’s international recognition. The novel describes an Italian general and priest returning to Albania 20 years after World War II to find and return the bodies of Italian soldiers killed in the war. The French publisher released the book without Kadare’s permission, as Albania was not part of the Universal Copyright Convention at the time. Once published, the novel was translated into many European languages. By 1977, it had been translated into over 20 languages, with Albanian communist press calling it "one of the most successful translations of the 1970s."
After the novel’s success in the West in 1970, older Albanian writers and critics strongly opposed Kadare, calling him "the darling of the West." A report by the Albanian secret police said, "This novel was published by the bourgeoisie and this cannot be accepted." Kadare’s enemies in the secret police and the Albanian Politburo called him a Western agent, a serious accusation in Albania. He continued writing in Albania and was widely promoted there, with frequent mentions in the Albanian press about his new works and translations. His writing was praised for addressing issues in Albanian society and using the revolution as a central theme. He was also called a "hero of new Albanian literature" with a "revolutionary drive" that "keeps pace with life and fights against old ideas."
In 1971, Kadare published the novel Chronicle in Stone, about a young Albanian boy in a stone city town caught in World War II and occupied by Greek, Italian, and German forces. The novel is described as using magic realism. John Updike of The New Yorker called it "a thoroughly enchant
Later life and death
Ismail Kadare married Helena Gushi, an Albanian writer, and they had two daughters. Besiana Kadare serves as Albania's ambassador to the United Nations and to Cuba. She also held the position of vice president of the United Nations General Assembly during its 75th session.
In his later years, Kadare returned to Albania. He had health problems for many years and passed away due to a heart attack at a hospital in Tirana on July 1, 2024, at the age of 88. A state funeral was held on July 3 at the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Tirana, but he was buried in a private ceremony afterward. Two days of mourning were declared in Albania, and one day of mourning was declared in Kosovo.
Awards
In 1992, Kadare was given the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca international literary award in France. In 1996, he was named a lifetime member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of France (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques), one of the five academies that make up the Institut de France, in the seat that had been left empty by Karl Popper, a recently deceased philosopher. In 1998, he received the international Herder Prize in Austria. In 2003, he was honored with the Ovid Prize in Romania and the Presidential Gold Medal of the League of Prizren from the President of Kosovo.
In 2005, Kadare was awarded the first-ever Man Booker International Prize in the United Kingdom for his entire body of work. In his speech, he said: "We supported each other as we tried to write literature as if that regime did not exist. Sometimes we succeeded. Other times we did not."
In 2008, Kadare received the Flaiano Prize in Italy. In 2009, he was given the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in Spain for his literary works.
In 2015, Kadare was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in Israel. Speaking about Albania and the Jewish people, he said: "I come from one of the few countries in the world that helped the Jews during World War II. I believe the number of Jews there grew from 200 at the start of the war to 2,000 by the end. The population always defended the Jews, whether during the kingdom, under Communism, or after it." He noted that Albanians refused to hand Jews over to the Nazis during the Holocaust and that many Albanians worked hard to protect Jewish refugees who had fled to Albania. He also said Albania and Israel share the experience of fighting for survival in a sometimes hostile neighborhood.
In 2016, Kadare became the first Albanian to receive the Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur, given by French president François Hollande. That year, he was also awarded the Albanian National Flag Decoration, Albania's highest honor, by President Bujar Nishani. He won the 2018 International Nonino Prize in Italy.
Kadare won the 2019 Park Kyong-ni Prize, an international award based in South Korea, for his literary works during his career.
In 2023, Kadare won the America Award in Literature for a lifetime contribution to international writing. That year, he was also named Grand Officer (Grand officier) of the Legion of Honour by a special decree of French president Emmanuel Macron, placing him among the 250 world-renowned personalities honored by France. The Legion of Honour is France's highest state title.
Kadare was nominated for the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature (called the "American Nobel") in the United States by Bulgarian writer Kapka Kassobova. He was selected as the 2020 laureate by the Prize's jury. He won the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In his speech, he said: "There is no room for literature in the Marxist vision of the future world." His nominator wrote: "Kadare is the successor of Franz Kafka. No one since Kafka has explored the infernal mechanism of totalitarian power and its impact on the human soul in as much hypnotic depth as Kadare."
Kadare won the 2020 Prozart Award, given by the PRO-ZA Balkan International Literature Festival, for his contributions to the development of literature in the Balkans.
Kadare received the President of the Republic of Albania "Honor of the Nation" Decoration and the French state order "Cross of the Legion of Honor." He was also a member of the Academy of Albania, the Berlin Academy of Arts, and the Mallarmé Academy. He was awarded honorary doctorates in 1992 from the University of Grenoble III in France, in 2003 from the University of Pristina in Kosovo, and in 2009 from the University of Palermo in Italy.
Kadare was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 15 times. He said the press spoke about him being a potential Nobel Prize winner so much that "many people think that I've already won it."
In 2023, Kadare was granted citizenship of Kosovo.
Legacy
Ismail Kadare was regarded as one of the most important writers in the world. The London newspaper The Independent stated, "He has been compared to famous writers like Gogol, Kafka, and Orwell. However, Kadare’s writing is unique, widely understood, yet deeply connected to his own culture." The New York Times noted that his work was also compared to that of Gabriel García Márquez and Milan Kundera. The Christian Science Monitor mentioned that his writing was likened to that of Dostoevsky and Isak Dinesen. Translator and biographer David Bellos said, "In some ways, he is similar to Balzac." Critic Richard Eder described Kadare as "an outstanding writer who deeply understood the effects of oppression on people."
Kadare’s books were created within the small but rich tradition of Albanian literature, which was nearly unknown in Europe or the rest of the world before his work. Through Kadare, Albanian literature became known, read, and valued. For the first time in its history, Albanian writing was connected to larger European and global literature.
Kadare’s work focuses on standing up against unfairness. He wrote regular books in a country that was a Communist dictatorship, which was very different from normal countries. He faced challenges to publish his books, as the government did not allow disagreement. At times, he risked his life to write. Kadare explained, "It was not possible to speak out. You could be shot for saying one word against the government."
During the rule of Enver Hoxha, at least 100,000 people were imprisoned for political reasons or for saying or writing something against the government. Around 5,000 people, including many writers, were killed.
Kadare used many clever methods to avoid Communist censors. He used old storytelling styles such as parables, myths, fables, folktales, allegories, and legends. He also included double meanings, references, hints, satire, and secret messages in his writing.
In general, Kadare’s work opposed the required writing style called Socialist Realism, which the government demanded. For three decades, he challenged Socialist Realism by using his own style, called subjective realism. He avoided censorship by using symbolic, historical, and mythological ideas.
The conditions in which Kadare lived and wrote were much harsher than in other European Communist countries, where some public disagreement was allowed. The situation in Albania was similar to North Korea or to the Soviet Union in the 1930s under Stalin. Despite this, Kadare used every chance to criticize the government in his books, using political stories that educated Albanian readers understood. Henri Amouroux, a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in France, noted that Soviet writers like Solzhenitsyn published their works during a time when the Soviet Union was changing, but Kadare lived and wrote in a country that remained under a strict Stalinist rule until 1990.
Works
Ismail Kadare's books have been translated into 45 languages. By 2020, most of his about 80 novels, plays, screenplays, poems, essays, and story collections had been translated into other languages.
Some of Kadare's most well-known books include The General of the Dead Army (1963), The Siege (1970), The Ghost Rider (1980), Broken April (1980; about blood feuds in the highlands of northern Albania), The Palace of Dreams (1981), The Pyramid (1992), and The Successor (2003; about the mysterious death of Hoxha's chosen successor, Mehmet Shehu).
Some of Kadare's books were translated into English by David Bellos. These translations were based on French versions, not the original Albanian texts.
The following Kadare novels have been translated into English:
Kadare's complete works (excluding essays, poetry, and short stories) were published by Fayard at the same time in French and Albanian between 1993 and 2004. Since 1996, his original Albanian-language works have been published only by Onufri Publishing House, either as single books or as complete sets. In 2009, a complete set of his works was published in 20 volumes.
The publication dates listed here refer to the first time the works were published in Albanian, unless otherwise noted.