Kadare passed over again

TIRANA, Oct. 9 – Ismail Kadare, Albania’s internationally renowned writer, who has been a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has once again failed to win the world’s greatest literary award although being one of the top favorites.
French novelist Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature for his lifelong exploration of the Nazi occupation and its effect on his country. In Stockholm, the Swedish Academy said Thursday it awarded the $1.1 million prize to the 69-year-old Modiano “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies” while uncovering life under German control.
The prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, is given to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”
An internationally renowned poet, novelist, essayist, Ismail Kadare has been perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature.
Kadare’s 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 a ceremony held on in the southern Albanian city of Vlora.
Several books written by Kadare have also been successfully turned into movies and plays.