Narrator, essayist and poet, Kadaré represents the pinnacle of Albanian literature and who, without forgetting his roots, has crossed frontiers to rise up as a universal voice against totalitarianism. Regarded as one of the greatest European writers and intellectuals of the 20th century, his works have been translated into over forty languages.

Ismaíl Kadaré, considered one of the greatest authors in world literature, was born in Gjirokastra, Albania in 1936. As a boy he witnessed World War II, the occupation of his country by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, until 1944 when the communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha was established in Albania. At the age of seventeen he won a poetry contest in Tirana, earning him an authorization to travel to Moscow and study at the Gorki Institute, from which he was expelled in 1961 because of the break in relations between the Balkan state and the USSR. Whilst attending the Muscovite institute he wrote The General of the Dead Army, which was enormously successful in France. Thanks to this novel, he obtained a sort of immunity in his country for representing national pride, even though he did not submit to communist dogmas. Forced by the regime, he was a member of the Albanian parliament from 1970 to 1982. In 1990, a few months before the collapse of the dictatorship, he exiled himself in Paris, the city where he has lived since, although he visits Albania frequently.

A great scholar of Albanian traditions and the idiosyncrasies of this Balkan state, his works take place around various incidents in his history, such as the break between Albania and the USSR, The Great Winter (1977); Catholic and Orthodox rivalries, Doruntine (1980); and the split between Tirana and Beijing, The Concert (1988). One of the most typical features of his work is that it is permanently open: Kadaré will rework his writings, poems become stories, stories grow and become novels and these, occasionally, will be reduced to stories. Another characteristic is how he recaptures Humanity’s great concerns and debates, taking them from oral tradition and classic literature, from Aeschylus, Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Chekhov, and placing them within a contemporary context.

However, the central theme of his work, expressed in each of his books, is totalitarianism, its mechanisms and the complicities that make it possible. This literary obsession reaches its climax in The Palace of Dreams (1993), published in Albania in 1981, when the communist dictatorship still governed. In this work, the Albanian writer builds an immense parable on despotic perversion, where in an imaginary country, a mammoth machine at the service of absolute power, the Office of Sleeping and Dreaming, controls the dreams of its citizens. Despite the fall of communism, Kadaré continues to give voice to the soul of totalitarian societies, such as in Three Elegies for Kosovo (1999) and In Front of a Woman’s Mirror (2002). His latest releases are Life, Death and Representation of Lul Mazreku (2007), Agamemnon’s Daughter (2003) and The Successor (2005).

He is a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of Paris, one of the five that make up the Institut de France, a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts and an officer of the French Legion of Honour. In 2005 he received the International Booker Prize. In addition, he received an honorary degree from South East European University (Republic of Macedonia).

The Prince of Asturias Foundation’s statutes establish that the aim of the Awards is to acknowledge and extol “scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work performed by individuals, groups of individuals or institutions at an international level.” Consonant with this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters “will be bestowed upon the person, institution, group of people or group of institutions whose work or research constitutes a significant contribution to universal culture in the field of Literature of Linguistics.”

This year a total of 31 candidatures from Albania, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, Chile, France, Holland, Hungary, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Macedonia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Spain ran for the award.

This is the sixth of the eight Prince of Asturias Awards to be bestowed in what is their twenty-ninth edition. The Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts went to Norman Foster, the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation was given to the World Health Organization, the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences was given to British naturalist David Attenborough. The Award for Communication and Humanities went to the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Scientific and Technical Research Award was jointly granted to American engineers Martin Cooper and Raymond S. Tomlinson.

Prince of Asturias Awards for Sports and Concord will be announced in September.

Each Prince of Asturias Award, which date back to 1981, comprises a diploma, a Joan Miró sculpture representing and symbolising the Awards, an insignia bearing the Foundation’s coat of arms, and a cash prize of 50,000 Euros. The awards will be presented in the autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias.
Source: The official announcement

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

A summer storm on the Ionian coast on Sunday, which caught tourists unprepared, has destroyed several beach-side facilities close to the city of Vlora, and threatened to sink a yacht.

The yacht which had three Italian tourists and Albanian MP Tritian Shehu on board, was caught in the storm off the coast of Karaburun, outside Vlora’s picturesque bay, local media reported.

The Albanian coastguard intervened, towing the small vessel to safety in the nearby Orikum Marina and Yacht club.

Shehu formerly served as the head of the Democratic Party and was deputy prime minister in 1996.

A second yacht in Vlora’s bay also found itself in difficulty due to the high seas, but managed to reach the ferry terminal in Vlora’s industrial port.

In the city of Orikum itself, several beach bars and club built on the beach were destroyed by the storm surge.
Source: Balkaninsight

The city of Vlora in southern Albania, which a decade ago was considered a hot spot for human trafficking, is reinventing itself as a vacation hub.

Stretched along a bay where the Adriatic and Ionian Sea meet, Vlora has long been considered one of the cities with the highest potential for tourism development in Albania.

However, after a breakdown of law and order in 1997, following the collapse of a series of Ponzi-investment schemes in which most of the town invested, the city became something of a frontier town.

In the late 1990s, traffickers and corrupt politicians set up a massive smuggling operation, shipping migrants and drugs on speedboats across the Adriatic to Italy.

Curbing the smuggling and its human cost became a problem for the Albanian government and a roadblock on its path to EU integraton. In response, the government launched a crackdown in 2004, and a three-year moratorium on the use of speedboats from 2006 to 2009.

Now, the city has left behind its darkest hours, and is reinventing itself, attracting more tourists every year, not only from Albania, but also from Kosovo, Macedonia and elsewhere.

Nowhere is this change more visible than in the city’s ever-changing skyline. There are hundreds of new developments and construction sites are opening up daily along the coast.

“Vlora is booming, and I don’t just say that because I am a real estate agent,” says Fiona Bosticky of Fresh Property Albania.

“The city is literally doubling in size and every time I go there there is more and more construction in the city and along the coast,” she adds.

Apartment prices start from around 550 euros per square metre in the centre, and go up to 2,400 euros per square metre for upscale projects along the coast.

On the main stretch of beachfront, apartments are priced at around 900 euros per square metre with those with a sea view for sale at around 750 euro per square metre.

According to Bosticky, who mainly provides consultancy services to foreigners interested in Albania’s property market, the main foreign buyers are Italians and Kosovo Albanians.

“Buyers from the UK and other parts of Europe don’t really understand Vlora’s potential at the moment,” she says.

“Prices for real estate on the Vlora coast are already the most expensive in Albania, and it will [only] get higher. [This is] also due to the growth of industry and the expanding port, which will mean more people looking for property,” Bosticky explains.

However, she warns that a series of large industrial developments planned on the city’s northern shore could prove problematic.

“They will need to be watched closely so that the area doesn’t get polluted,” Bosticky says. Source: Balkaninsight

Judging by the excellent preservation work and commemorative nature of the tomb, Murad was lucky enough to kick the bucket in Kosovo, as generations of the same family have tirelessly safeguarded his place of departure, which happened during the Battle of Kosovo between the Serb Empire, and it allies, and Ottoman Turks in 1389.

Just as the history of the Balkans is sometimes baffling and contested, so is the story of Murad’s death. But regardless of tales depicting either a brave fall in battle or perhaps a murder plot, visiting the sultan’s tomb is a great way to discover ancient Ottoman remnants in Kosovo.

Fadil, the admissions clerk, will greet you upon entering the large courtyard of the memorial grounds, which is shaded by dozens of trees bearing fruits such as plums, apples and pears. Directly to your right is a house which functions as a biographical museum of the fallen sultan, funded by both Kosovo’s and Turkey’s ministries of culture, as is the maintenance of the tomb.  One mulberry tree is believed to be the only living survivor of the battle, 700 years on.

Straight ahead is the stone building surrounding Murad’s tomb, a large dome covered mausoleum constructed using a traditional Ottoman design. Fadil will ask you to take off your shoes before you enter. At this time do not forget to invite Sanija along, the elderly and brisk Kosovo-Bosnian woman whose family has lived on, and maintained, the grounds for centuries. She serves as the perfect tour guide, but only speaks Bosnian and Turkish. Fadil therefore works as a translator. One or two visitors stop at the site every couple of days, says Fadil.

Sanija tells Prishtina Insight that her deceased husband’s family, who were early immigrants from Uzbekistan, travelled to Kosovo during the years of Ottoman occupation. They took up the responsibility of protecting the tomb. Many members of her husband’s family are buried in the back garden of the tomb.

Murad’s tomb is placed under a beautifully hand panted dome which incorporates Ottoman floral patterns with Arabic scripture. The tomb is wrapped in Islamic-influenced green fabric, again using Arabic scripture which is a common throughout tombs in the Islamic world.

Sania tells Prishtina Insight that Murad’s body was returned for a traditional burial in the city of Bursa in Turkey. Whether the site of the mausoleum is the location where his tent was pitched, he died, or neither of these, is shrouded in the haze of history. It is believed his organs may have been buried on the battlefield.

And if you are not interested in trying to unpick the history of the site, the bucolic scenery is also worth the trip, and would be a perfect destination for a peaceful lunch or picnic away from the hectic nature of Prishtina.

The Sultan Murad I Turbe Complex is on the main Prishtina to Mitrovica highway. Source: Balkaninsight

The Kopaonik ski resort offers reliable snow, good infrastructure and reasonable accommodation. Why travel further afield?

With visas to international destinations difficult to obtain, most Serbs get their skiing experience at home. And most choose Kopaonik.

To be fair, Kopaonik is quite a trek from Belgrade, especially if the weather is bad. The first hour or so of the roughly 5 hour journey is along the motorway but from there on, the roads deteriorate and the surface becomes uneven and pitted.  You’ll need to pack a set of snow chains for your car and you’ll need them for at least the final half hour of the journey up into the mountains. There’s no need, however, to get your hands dirty putting them on, as there are willing workers waiting in almost every lay-by to do it for you, for a few hundred dinars.

Your first problem, on arrival, could well be where to park your car.  Some hotels and apartments will reserve you a place – try to insist on this when you book.  Otherwise you’ll have to squeeze into the public parking spaces which are inadequate and chaotic.

Accommodation at Kopaonik includes vikendica (cottages to let) along with more traditional self-catering apartments and a range of hotels.  Don’t, however, expect to be able to turn up and book.

The resort is always busy and often fully booked.  Almost every travel agency in Belgrade will be able to book on your behalf, or of course you can also check the options online (kopaonik.net or eng.infokop.net are both good sources).  Don’t expect to get a bargain; a week’s accommodation for a family of four in Zermatt, Switzerland, with a view of the Matterhorn can be had for as little as €400, but expect to pay at least another €100 for a vikendica in Kopaonik. The best hotel in town, the 4-star Grand, charges around 5,000 dinars per person per night for a double room, depending on your travel dates.

Unless you possess silver-tongued charm or have money to waste, don’t even think about trying to book a weekend’s skiing.  Nobody, it seems, will sell you a hotel room, a self-catering apartment or a vikendica for less than a week.  I’ve tried to reason.  I’ve begged.  I’ve shouted.  But it seems that the local hoteliers would rather hope against hope that someone will take a week’s booking rather than take even a last minute booking for a weekend.

The British, it seems, are here in force.  Yugoslavia once rivaled Spain as a package destination for British holidaymakers and after its break-up, the British have been amongst the first to return.  Most of the big UK tour operators offer ski packages to Kopaonik, and their bulk buying means that they can offer prices under £500 (€520) for a week in the Grand Hotel, including flights and transfers, so you’re as likely to hear a Birmingham accent as you are a Belgrade accent on the slopes.

Kopaonik is a great place to learn.  Although the 60km of ski tracks do include one two more challenging pistes, the majority of the resort is easy skiing – perfect for beginners and families.  The two official ski schools are professional, good value and English-speaking.  There are also a number of qualified guides available to provide private lessons.  Instructors and their students get priority on the lifts too!

At 8,500 dinars ski passes are cheap by international standards and about on a par with resorts in neighboring Bulgaria.  There are 10 chair lifts and 13 drags and the infrastructure seems to be in good condition.  Pistes are well marked but safety standards are not always at the highest levels.  Support pillars for chairlifts are not always padded where they cross a piste, and one or two outcrops could be better protected. The pistes are wide, well maintained and by the standards of many European or US destinations very quiet, even at weekends.  Lift queues are not unknown, but not particularly long either.  The pistes are dotted with good value bars and cafes.  Check out the small, rustic cafe at the top of the “Karaman” lift for great cevapcici cooked over the open fire.

Nightlife is a little muted by the standards of some of the big European destinations and this is definitely not a place to come to if après ski is a priority.  There are some good bars and there are restaurants aplenty, but this is not Verbier.

Once you get over being stung for your accommodation, you could quite come to like Kopaonik.  It has a provincial charm, but has also almost all of the facilities that you’d expect from some of the biggest resorts across the world, with none of the pretensions.

Source: Balkan Insight

The Siege by Ismail Kadare was published recently in English, almost 40 years after it came out in Albania. The historical novel, written during Albania’s isolation imposed by the communist regime, is a fascinating allegory of this part of the Balkans in the 1970s– a reality which no Albanian writer was allowed to describe in a more direct way at the time.

Kadare, the country’s most renowned writer, is somewhat of a contradictory figure. After pursuing philology and literature at the University in Tirana and later in Moscow, he managed to give an entertaining twist to Albania’s dismal Social Realist literature. There is a disagreement about whether the writer conformed with or opposed the socialist regime, but the fact remains that, in 1990, shortly before its collapse, Kadare sought asylum in France, stating that “dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible… The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.”

The novels Kadare wrote under Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship were mainly historical, as using allegories of the distant past was a way to address and discuss the present more safely. The Siege, set in the fifteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire began its long campaign to occupy Albania, makes no exception.

Kadare tells the story of an Albanian fortress under Ottoman siege. The main events occur in a Turkish command centre while the events from the inside of the fortress are contained only on a few pages. The defenders are not individualised and do not differ from each other. They have no names, apart from the superhero, Skanderbeg, who is Albania’s national hero.

In the book, the Ottoman pasha leads a vast army towards Albania, where a lone fortress stands. When his first attack fails, great cannons are cast to smash the walls. The pasha tries tunnelling under the wall, tipping cages of diseased rats over the railings, and then cutting off the water supply, but to no avail. Finally, he hurls his men at the castle in serial assaults, where they break like waves on the stone.

The Albanians’ mysterious leader, Skanderbeg, appears to be invincible. The army is recalled, the despairing pasha kills himself, and the survivors fend their way back to Constantinople through the autumn rain.

In Kadare’s allegoric tale, cannons had become so great that they risks annihilating humanity (a reference to the atomic bomb), and trade cooperation between two religiously antagonistic big powers – Venice and Ottoman Empire, is easily transferable to the 1960s’ peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and the USA.

Finally, it is interesting to trace the location where the story takes place. In the book, the fortress under siege is Kruja, which stands 15 kilometres north of Tirana and used to be Albania’s medieval centre and Skanderbeg’s stronghold. The Ottomans failed to conquer it three times and it was almost totally destroyed in 1530 after an uprising. What remains of Kruja today are the seventeenth-century Ottoman fortifications, which are not very inspirational for a book setting.

If you visit the Kruja Fortress today with The Siege in hand, it will be impossible to see any similarity between what remains of the structure and how Kadare describes in his novel. He writes of three defence walls and a very strange entry with a narrow and inner garden, where the Ottoman soldiers died.

That depiction fits the Shkodra Fortress perfectly, which still stands as it is described in the book. Located about 90 kilometres north of Tirana, it is one of the biggest and best preserved fortresses on the Balkans, with three defence walls and the rat-trap gate where the Ottoman soldiers lost their mind and honour, as Kadare describes.

Another reason that seems to suggest that the setting of the book is in fact the Shkodra Fortress is that it is present in several historical accounts. The Siege of Shkodra – a sixteenth-century book in Latin, has been known to inspire contemporary Albanian writers. It describes in detail the 1579 Great Siege of Shkodra, in which Venetians fought and lost against the Turks. In addition, one of the greatest paintings of Paolo Veronese, on the façade of Ducal Palace of Venice, depicts the battle of Shkodra. Meanwhile, the Kruja Fortress is hardly present in any historical records.

Source: www.balkantravellers.com

A new exhibition of photographs in London captures the rugged and unforgiving quality of the landscape of southern Dalmatia.

Green wooden shutters on a background of stone bake in harsh sunlight. A gothic church tower stands silhouetted against a glowing, red-ochre sunset. The turquoise waters of a shallow bay meet the aquamarine blue of the horizon.

The landscape could only be Dalmatia, whose harsh and jagged contours form the theme of young Croatian photographer Robert Krivec’s new exhibition, “Modest Beauty”, which opened in London this week.

Krivec, who has been living in London since 2007, says the title of the exhibition – set up with the aid of the Croatian embassy’s Flora Turner – was intended to convey something of the simplicity of the panorama in south-central Dalmatia and the islands, a quality he has been exploring and trying to capture on lens for the last seven years.

“This is a landscape that doesn’t change much,” he says. “There is little new technology. People are still living more or less as they did about 60 years ago.”

People play very little direct part in these pictures, which more often explore the relationship between the natural elements – the sea, sky, fields of long grasses, bent trees, and rocks – and various items that local people have constructed from those same elements, such as stone houses, wooden shutters, church towers and fishermen’s nets.

Humans themselves are rarely present, adding an air of stillness and timelessness to the compositions. But the humble nature of their artefacts, the low stone cottages, the cracked shatters, serves as a reminder that Dalmatia’s transformation into the holiday playground of the rich is a new phenomenon. Traditionally, this was an unyielding sort of a place, ancient in terms of human settlement but where life was a struggle.

The photographer’s evident fascination with the harsh edges of the landscape possibly reflects the fact that he is not a native and so sees it with the observant eye of an outsider. Krivec comes from the very different world of Zagreb, where the relationship of light to landscape is quite different and where, of course, there is no sea. In these photographs, on the other hand, the sea is a constant presence, its proximity felt even when it is not seen.

‘Modest Beauty’ runs until February 28 at the Gallery of the Croatian Embassy, 21 Conway St, London W1. For more information on the exhibition and sale prices, contact Flora Turner on fturner@mvpei.hr and Robert Krivec, at robert.krivec@gmail.com

Source: Balkan Insight

The Albania-Italy connection is serviced by several low-cost airlines, with Albanian ‘Belle Air Airway’ having the lion’s share. The private Albanian Airlines also has flights as do Italian carriers Alitalia and Club Air. Star Airway, a new Albanian carrier is expected to start flights with various Italian airports in early 2009 to cater to the large Albania emigrant communities in the country.

Tirana’s Airport has seen a proportional growth in traffic in the last two years and is currently used by 16 airlines that connect the Albanian capital directly with 30 destinations, mainly in Western Europe where most of Albania’s 1.5 million-strong diaspora live.

In 2007  the aiport recorded its best year in terms of passenger numbers and cargo traffic, serving 1.1 million passengers, 22 percent higher than the previous year, and handling 3,483 tonnes of cargo.

Last year, it got a €46 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to extend the new passenger terminal, construct additional airport buildings and invest in new equipment and systems. The expansion is expected to be completed within 2009.

(Reporting by Besar Likmeta) Balkaninsight