“Ismail Kadare is one of the greatest authors of our time and a culture treasure of Albania. I am humbled by the opportunity to meet him in person,” said U.S Ambassador Donald Lu in a meeting with Kadare this week
TIRANA, April 22 – The American flag will be flown outside the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC, in honor of Ismail Kadare, Albania’s internationally renowned writer and perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. The ceremony is a tradition on Capitol Hill, the seat of the United States Congress, for distinguished congressmen and senators, but this will be a unique event, since this time the ceremony will honor a prominent cultural figure from a foreign country, the U.S embassy in Tirana says.
“Ismail Kadare is one of the greatest authors of our time and a culture treasure of Albania. I am humbled by the opportunity to meet him in person,” said U.S Ambassador Donald Lu in a meeting with Kadare this week.
U.S. congressman Eliot Engel, a strong supporter of the Albanian cause, and Vehbi Bajrami, the publisher of the Illyria Albanian-American newspaper in New York lobbied for the flag ceremony, whose date hasn’t been determined yet.
“I am very happy that the Congress is honoring Albania’s greatest ever writer. Kadare is today a passport for Albanians around the world, the greatest living personality of the Albanian world, a fact which Albanians often forget,” Bajrami has said.
Earlier this year, Kadare was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for his works which best express and promote the idea of the “freedom of the individual in society.”
“Kadare is an ironic and very interesting storyteller who excellently and subtly confesses about the collective blame especially the non-punishment of this blame. Even though his characters are mainly local, the understanding and importance are undoubtedly universal,” says the jury of the Jerusalem Prize, the cultural highlight of the Jerusalem International Book Fair.
Kadare, known for writing about Albania’s totalitarian government, has had his works translated into over 30 languages, the most famous of which is “The General of the Dead Army.”
An internationally renowned poet, novelist and essayist, Ismail Kadare has been perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. His international acclaim for his works peaked in 2005 when he won the Man Booker International Prize.
“Born in 1936 in the Albanian mountain town of Girokaster near the Greek border, Kadare is Albania’s best-known poet and novelist. He established an uneasy modus vivendi with the Communist authorities until their attempts to turn his reputation to their advantage drove him in October 1990 to seek asylum in France. Some of his novels include The General of the Dead Army, The Palace of Dreams, Albanian Spring and The File on H. ,” says the Man Booker about Kadare.
In 2009, Kadare won Spain’s Prince of Asturias literary Prize for being “a universal voice against totalitarianism.”
In September 2010, Kadare also won Italy’s “Lerici Pea” poetry prize in the competition’s 57th edition. Organizers said the prize was awarded to Kadare for his poems which have served as instrument of freedom to all people around the world who are denied fundamental freedoms.
In 2010, when Albania celebrated its 98th independence anniversary, Kadare also won the 12 edition of the Balkan literary prize, the Balkanika.
In late 2014, internationally renowned Albanian author Ismail Kadare was handed the special Jeronim De Rada award in this 17th edition of the Tirana Book Fair, the largest book event bringing together Albanian publishing houses. The perennial Albanian nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded the special prize on the 200th birth anniversary of De Rada, who is not only the best known writer of Italian-Albanian literature but also the foremost figure of the Albanian nationalist movement in nineteenth-century Italy.
Several books written by Kadare have also been successfully turned into movies and plays.
