Institutional, academic, cultural Albania and the Albanians themselves, lower the flag to half-mast, on July 2 and 3, 2024, for the death of our great writer, Ismail Kadare, with whose work dozens of generations in Albania and wherever the Albanian language is spoken.

Biography from the Academy of Sciences of Albania.

Ismail Kadare was born in Gjirokastër on January 28, 1936. The city of his birth followed him forever wherever he lived and wrote, in the West and in the East, becoming an inseparable part of his creativity in all phases of life. With a literary opus that contains over 70 works, in all types and subtypes of literature, essays and journalism, in countless editions and reprints, Ismail Kadare has occupied and will occupy the top of the country in the history of Albanian literature.

Ismail Kadare is already an identity figure for the Albanian people, alongside figures such as Gjergj Kastrioti-Skënderbeu, Ismail Qemali and Mother Teresa. His physical departure is undoubtedly the greatest loss of Albanian literature; it is a great loss of European and world literature; heavy loss for Albanian and European academia. His departure is inconsolable for the Academy of Sciences, for Albanian literature and its balance, for the Albanian language and its speakers, for European and world literature. Albanian literature will lack a master, European literature will lack the spokesperson of a nation and a region; our civilization will miss the pronouncer of great words.

Ismail Kadare has become part of the civic and moral awareness of the Albanian people, a recognition program for the foreigners of his world, the initiator of the highest creative values ​​of his country. He is the most important writer of Albanian literature from the beginning and throughout the five centuries of its life. His work has over time crossed the borders of Albania, of Albanian literature and language, of the Albanian world, and has become a quality part of the heritage of world literature.

For decades, Kadare’s work was a source of information for the world about the completely closed Albanian reality. Today this work serves as an identity passport and as an alternative history of the Albanian people throughout the centuries and especially in modern times. Connoisseur and interpreter of myths and traditional codes, connoisseur of European values ​​as much as of the limitations in the understanding of the Albanian man, he decoded and served the “other reader” the most complicated knots of the past and present of his people. He wrote in the conditions of strict ideological restrictions, became a window to see and a program to read the West and to be known by it; gave freedom to people when there was no freedom; tried all phases of critical relations with the powers, from the enthusiasm of futuristic belief to doubt, from doubt to contestation, from contestation to rejection and from rejection to literary dissidence, writing normal literature in abnormal historical conditions.

I. Kadare’s literature has internationalized Albanian culture on a European and world scale. The languages ​​in which his literature has been spoken are over 50 and the number of titles published and republished outside his native language is over 1500. His work is studied in universities within the history of European and world literature. A new branch has already been added to the science of albanology, that of cadareologists, researchers and translators of his work. Under the influence of this new branch, the place of the Albanian language in universities has also increased, with the opening of new departments and units, from Japan to the United States of America, from France to Russia. Today, Kadare’s work is translated and studied even in some countries where there were restrictions.

Kadare’s work for years and continues to be honored with the highest prizes given for literary merit, standing out on the world level even compared to works written in conditions of freedom. He has won the “race” with his fellow writers in the world, with the literature written in democracy. The last word about this work has been said and is being said by the readers of this work, who are already found in all continents, constantly increasing along with the addition of translation languages. Kadare’s work is already listed alongside the immortal masterpieces of world literature, which do not know an era, but make an era.

Ismail Kadare is and will remain a moral authority for the Albanian people, an institution of creation and thought, a fundamental reference for his life. The work he has created is related to essential issues of the Albanian and Balkan worldview, the interaction of cultures and civic values ​​of the region, the evolution of historical and cultural identities. It is a window of primary importance to recognize the psychoses and complexes of the peoples of Southeast Europe, their true aspirations.

Kadare’s literature will be read and appreciated continuously, as the messages of the work he created, the power of his words and thoughts, make this work always timely and attractive to its readers.