What prevents Kadare from winning the Nobel Prize

Perhaps the Nobel Prize is highly politicised to make a true index of the best world literature; and maybe world literature is a very problematic category. The question that remains, however, is why Albanian writer Ismail Kadare has not won this award, and why it is not well known in the English-speaking world, despite being published and very well-known in France. Translation problems may be somewhat to blame: Under Enver Hoxha's Maoist record, Albania did not make copyright agreements, which meant that translation rights would not take any serious publishing houses, and the absence of English translators in English has continued to be a major problem: most of Kadare's translation work comes through translations of David Bellos from French.

Yet, taking Nobel from Le Clezio in 2008 [remark of translators: and then, a few years after this interview, Patrick Modiano, also French] shows that there is no more restriction in English. What prevents Kadare from receiving the prize, is the constant stain that has been attached to the writer of eventual cooperation with Hoxha's regime. Even though he was not a member of the party, Kadare was for a long time chairman of the cultural institute led by the dictator's fearful wife, Nexmije Hoxha. Furthermore, some claim that during the rule of Hodge Kadare, he has written several works of the most popular winter to praise his leader and secession from the Soviets in 1961. After this division the country's communism was synthesized with an ultra-nationalist mythology.

Such criticism is also helped by Kadare's admission, which even he himself claims never to consider to be a dissident. Somehow there was an identity that was attributed to me by some foreign journalists, he says, and in that sense he was not a meritor.

Most important, the Balkan story has always been inspiring to Kadare. Albania's entire story is almost entirely retold through its many novels, from ancient Greece to the Ottomans, and nowadays, during Hoxha's meal, there are indications that Kadare has worked on rewrite and use of history as a weapon. The siege, which describes an Albanian city-state under the exhausting Ottomans' attack, has also been read as a story related to Hoxha's nationalist lines, which was obsessed with fighting Soviets.

Robert Elsie has tried to regain Kadare's political reputation, calling it a “deeply dissident “who had life “colaborationist”. But why are we still asking Kadare to be political dissident? And why would critics who love Kadare want to revis him as such, as if this gave his work greater weight? As Kadare himself said, writing in himself was an act of resistance in his country. It was impossible any kind of criticism, and therefore Kadare escaped into the historical and allegory fixation, going beyond the boundaries of communist social-realism. In “In his masterpiece, the Dream Palace, located in the “United States Osmane”, where dreams are considered for signs of upcoming political events, he not only hits authoritarian regimes and their obsession with oversight, but also explores the contrast between Albanian identity and { the great past that Hoxha tried to invent.

I find the criticism of the siege more interesting. It has been accused of creating the myth about Albanian nobles and Ottoman barbarians, but it seems clearly we are dealing with a more complex picture of the Balkans that today is more important than ever. Although Albanians are shown half the story through the collective voice of the choir, the Ottomans are described with all their vitality, and multiethnic humanity. Kadare uses Ottomans to explore the region's co-existing identities in a story that was published in 1970, and received a touching resonance from the 90 events in Sarajevo.

His writing does not lie: The dream palace, the siege, and the novel that has written since the fall of communism are clearly expressions of the same artistic version. Heather McRobbie.