PI RISMAIL KADARANA

Ismail Kadare had the gift of nicely describing ugly things, which made it irreplaceable for all of us who lived through a very ugly time.

When I try to compare it to something, I think Ismail Kadare resembles a man who lives spreading dreams.

Imagine a land shut up, tired, isolated, ruined, and without hope, in which a man writes all day and night, until morning he enters into the house and leaves a dream on the head of each of his bed.

These were his books.

That's enough for a writer to leave peacefully for doing his job towards the nation perfectly.

Ismail Kadare put the nation into debt by giving it more hope and faith than he could digest, when the nation had almost nothing when it did not eat, drink, believe, and see no light.

His books stood on empty tables like hunger, like thirst, water, and bread.

I will never forget how I expected with the passions of a child, get the books of Ismail Kadare and I haven't kept it since then, and maybe I'll never keep up again to buy a book.

Reading Ismail Kadare was not just a pleasure but an obligation to time.

You were reading Ishmael, not reading it.

That was the point. That was the time. That was Albania.

When I have come to know him closely, I have also come to realize something that the blind colour of his literature does not allow you to see him properly. Ismail Kadare was voluntarily protected, stubborn and courageously by the sickness of the great writers: he never became pessimistic.

He believed that the world would become better, that people would become more peaceful, that the future would be happier, that envy would be free and that good could conquer evil.

Ismail Kadare was a man who believed that optimism is mankind's medicine and I'm convinced he left with that conviction.

Now that he is no more, his absence is greater than he himself.