TIRANA, Nov. 19 – Albanian writer and former diplomat Ylljet Alià§ka has promoted his first book of short stories in the Czech language. The book called “Kur Hrushovi kaloi prane fshatit tone” (When Khrushchev passed near our village) is named after one of his short stories depicting Albania under communism when the former Soviet Union communist leader visited Albania in the late 1950s.
Speaking in an interview with leading iDNES.cz Czech news portal Alià§ka, who now works as a university professor, recalled how he was forced to study biology instead of medicine because of his unsuitable political profile and biography and worked as an elementary school teacher in remote areas where he developed his early passion for writing and literature.
“After the fall of communism in Albania, I was acquainted with a list of banned western authors ranked based on a predetermined hierarchy and punishments. First came the Bible which was paradoxically followed by the leftist Jean-Paul Sartre. The list also included Czech writers Kafka and Kundera,” says Alià§ka.
“Even Quran was on the ban list, but I’m afraid it was less dangerous than the Bible. This was a result of the fact that the Albanian communist regime considered Christians and especially Catholics as the most dangerous opponents because of their links to the western world,” he added.
Alià§ka, who served as Albania’s ambassador to France from 2007 to 2013 describes Albania as “a dynamic country with its ups and downs but this is the natural way of development for a country which came out of long period of dictatorship and a country which tries to find values and its road to European integration.”
Alià§ka is the author of several volumes of short stories including “Tregime” (Short stories) in 1997; Kompromisi (The Compromise) in 2000 and Parullat me gurà« (The Slogans in stone) in 2003. Collections of his tales have also appeared in French and in Polish. His short story “The Slogans in Stone” was filmed and awarded the Youth Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
