Le Monde/Acclaimed Albanian writer Ismail Kadare dies aged 88
He was often tipped to win a Nobel prize for his towering body of work which delved into his country’s myths and history to dissect the mechanisms of totalitarianism.
Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare died Monday of a heart attack aged 88, his editor and a Tirana hospital told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Doctors tried to revive the writer when he was brought to a Tirana hospital with “no signs of life” and he was declared dead at 8:40 am local time, the hospital said. Editor and publisher Bujar Hudhri confirmed his death.
His sophisticated storytelling – often likened to that of George Orwell or Franz Kafka – used metaphor and irony to reveal the nature of tyranny under Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania from 1946 until his death in 1985.
“Dark times bring unpleasant but beautiful surprises,” Kadare told AFP. “Literature has often produced magnificent works in the dark ages as if it were seeking to remedy the misfortune inflicted on people.”
He was often tipped to win a Nobel prize for his towering body of work which delved into his country’s myths and history to dissect the mechanisms of totalitarianism. Kadare’s novels, essays and poems have been translated into more than 40 languages, making him the Balkans’ best-known modern novelist.
The prolific writer broke ranks with isolated Albania’s communists and fled to Paris a few months before the government collapsed in the early 1990s. He wrote about his disillusionment in his book The Albanian Spring – The Anatomy of Tyranny.