Ismail Kadare To Receive Prince of Asturias Prize

Tirana | 23 October 2009 | Besar Likmeta
Albanian writer Ismail Kadare will receive Spain’s highest literary honour, the Asturias prize, at a Friday ceremony in Oviedo.

Read the official announcement

“Using everyday language which is nonetheless full of lyricism, Ismaíl Kadare narrates the tragedy of his land, an incessant battleground; giving life to old myths through new words, he expresses all the grief and dramatic load of conscience,” the prize jury said in a statement following the announcement of the award.

“His commitment is rooted in the great literary tradition of the Hellenic world, which he projects onto the contemporary stage as an open condemnation of any form of totalitarianism and in defence of reason,” the statement added.

Kadare was born in 1936 in the southern town of Gjirokastra, near the Greek border. He first studied at the University of Tirana in Albania, and later at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow.

During half a century of Stalinist rule in Albania his works attacked totalitarianism and the doctrines of socialist realism with subtle allegories.

A perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature, his novels and essays have been translated into more than 40 languages. Chronicle in Stone, The Siege, The Three-Arched Bridge, Broken April, The Palace of Dreams, The General of the Dead Army. These are some of its novels currently available in English.

Shortly before the collapse of the communist regime in 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of the democratisation of Albania and an end to single-party rule. Source: Balkaninsight

Short URL: http://www.albanianeconomy.com/news/?p=2182

Posted by admin on Oct 23 2009. Filed under Entertainment, General News, Top News, Travel & Leisure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry