Ismail Kadare: Albanian Literary Giant Passes Away at 88

Ismail Kadare, Albanian Literary Giant, Passes Away at 88

Ismail Kadare, the prolific Albanian novelist and poet known for his allegorical works that subtly criticized Albania’s totalitarian regime, passed away in Tirana, Albania, at the age of 88. His editor and publisher in Albania, Bujar Hudhri, confirmed that Mr. Kadare suffered a cardiac arrest at his home and later passed away at a hospital in Tirana.

Over a career spanning five decades, Mr. Kadare penned numerous novels, poems, short stories, and essays. He gained international acclaim in 1970 with the translation of his debut novel, “The General of the Dead Army,” into French, which was lauded as a literary masterpiece by European critics.

Despite being nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize, Mr. Kadare never received the prestigious award. However, in 2005, he was honored with the inaugural Man Booker International Prize (now the International Booker Prize) for his outstanding contributions to fiction. John Carey, the panel’s chairman, described him as a “universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer.”

Comparisons to literary giants like Kafka, Kundera, and Orwell were common for Mr. Kadare. Throughout the first three decades of his career, he wrote under the oppressive regime of Enver Hoxha, one of the eastern bloc’s most ruthless and peculiar dictators.