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doctrine or ideology. He expressed dissent
through the representation of the impossibility
of everyday life under communism and through
the evocation of an eternal Albania that was
more ancient and more durable than the new
Albania of Hoxha. His opposition was a form
of praxis inasmuch as he steadfastly refused
to surrender his language and identity or to be
forced into exile. But he paid dearly for this
refusal. In such works as The Shadow, he also
questioned his own role and motives.
Kadare’s creativity must be plotted in
terms of its antinomies. He is both Albanian
patriot and European existentialist, repository
of the legends of his nation and communist
modernizer, dictator and dissident, Zeus and
Prometheus. This is what makes him a great
writer rather than a political dissident. Kadare is
the voice of Albania’s modernity and the singer
of its ancient identity. He is the alter ego and the
nemesis of the dictator, and in this ambiguity
lies the key to his role, his reputation, and the
value of his works.
Many of Kadare’s novels have been
translated into English from the French of Jusuf
Vrioni and Tedi Papavrami, rather than from the
original Albanian. John Hodgson’s translation
of The Three-Arched Bridge is one of the few
to have been directly translated from Kadare’s
original language. Kadare has always worked
closely with his French translators, however,
and Jusuf Vrioni, the French-educated, bilingual
Albanian detained in the country after the
communist takeover, devoted himself to the task
of translation. In addition, Kadare has revised
his works for the complete edition (currently
twelve volumes) published simultaneously in
Albanian and French by Paris-based publisher
Fayard since the early 1990s. Kadare’s bestknown
works available in English include The
Palace of Dreams, Broken April, Doruntine,
The Three-Arched Bridge, and Chronicle in
Stone. His controversial socialist-realist novel
The Great Winter is available in French and
German but not yet in English translation. The
Successor, Kadare’s novel about the mysterious
death in 1982 of Hoxha’s partisan comrade
and second-in-command, Mehmet Shehu, has
recently appeared in English translation. v
Notes
1
Maks Velo provides information on the treatment of
writers and critical intellectuals under the Hoxha regime
in his documentation of the controversy over Kadare’s
poem “The Red Pashas” in La disparition des “Pashas
rouges” d’Ismail Kadaré: Enquête sur un “crime
littéraire” (Paris. Fayard. 2004).
2
The original title was L’Hiver de la grande solitude
(1971); a second, enlarged version, Le grand hiver, was
published in 1978.
3
Thomas Schreiber, Enver Hodja: Le sultan rouge (Paris.
Lattès. 1994), 43–61.
4
Ismail Kadare, The Palace of Dreams, translated from the
French of Jusuf Vrioni by Barbara Bray (London. Harvill.
1993), 151.
5
Ismaïl Kadaré, Entretiens avec Eric Faye en lisant
en écrivant (Paris. Jose Corti. 1991); Ismaïl Kadaré,
Dialogue avec Alain Bosquet, tr. Jusuf Vrioni (Paris.
Fayard. 1995).
6
See Noel Malcolm’s review of The Three-Arched Bridge
in the New York Review of Books, November 6, 1997 (21–
24), as well as the exchange with Kadare in the January
15, 1998, issue (59–60), and Steven Schwartz’s comments
in the April 9, 1998, issue (80).
7
At the time of writing this article, a documentation of
Kadare’s files with the state security police has been
published, in which the author is shown to have been
under attack from the age of twenty-two by the Sigurimi
and to have remained uncompromised in his dealings with
the regime.
Reprinted with permission from World Literature Today
80.5 (September–October 2006), 7–11. Copyright © 2006
by World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of
the University of Oklahoma. Reprinted by permission.
Translation Review 27