Farewell to Ismail Kandare

In a 2016 episode of the popular book TV show Literarisches Quartett, German author Maxim Biller praised Ismail Kandare, saying that he should have a stronger presence in the German-speaking world and receive the recognition he deserves. He described Kadare as one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th century never to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature. And then Biller added: “Unfortunately, he has the misfortune of being an Albanian writer.”

With this phrase Biller wanted to say that not only Kadare is easily forgotten, but also his homeland. This is even more tragic if you consider that after decades of isolation of the country under Hoxha’s dictatorship, all the Albanian people want is to belong to Europe.

To study in Moscow

Biller specifically referred to the then-new German novel Twilight of the Steppe Gods, written by Kandare in 1978. The book is not one of Kandare’s signature works – for three reasons.

First, it has very strong autobiographical elements and concerns the author’s studies at the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow during the 1950s. Second, the author describes a real setting with a real historical background – and not, for example, in a metaphorical historical context. And thirdly this novel is an extremely entertaining read, with Kadare adopting a style of writing that is more humorous and less heavy and sad.

Man in the totalitarian regime

And this book, however, deals with the life of a man in a totalitarian regime – like, for example, the novel “The Pyramid”. In an interview Kadare had said that it is difficult to decide whether it is a disadvantage for a writer to write in a totalitarian regime. Because these conditions inspired Kadare to conceive works that, although at a first superficial glance they could be considered simply as historical novels, have many facets and tell the stories of individuals at the mercy of the system. Most of Kandare’s books, many of which have been translated into Greek in the last thirty years, take place in Albania, but they also touch on a wide range of global issues.

If one indulges in the patterns of Albanian literary history, it is impossible to avoid Kadare. And one can take a break from his works, but one can never put him aside for good. During the period when I was professor of Albanian Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, I organized several literary seminars on Ismail Kandare, a writer who left us such a wealth of works that it is sometimes difficult to choose only a few of his texts.

Kadare in Germany

In the German-speaking world Kandare was never welcomed with open arms. Characteristic is the scene described by Peter Platzman, co-founder of the German-Albanian Friendship Association, from a visit of the author to the Frankfurt book fair in 1982: “At that time, Kandare was not known at all in Germany, his only published work was “The general of the dead army” from the publishing house Claassen. We visited many publishing houses of the exhibition, but no one showed interest in Kadare”.

The only time I saw Kadare in person was at a book fair in Basel in 2007, when at one of the fair’s events he appeared on stage with the – also excellent – ​​Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic. The two of them didn’t have much to say, which is probably due to the format of the event. The impression I got was that the organizers thought “they’re both from the Balkans, they’ll find something to say about powder kegs and wars”. Such treatment would be unheard of for a German author – in France, on the contrary, Kandare was already honored early and in the appropriate way.

The author and his homeland

In general, Europe treats Kandare the same way it treats Albania: both yes and no. But Kadare’s work has not been properly appreciated even in Albania. During the dictatorship, people eagerly awaited the author’s new work, because for them it was a window to the outside world. Today, however, few people read anymore. Kandare, however, need not be a preoccupation only for academics – several of his works are pleasant even for the beach.

Ismail Kandare lived to be 88. He was born in 1936 in Argyrokastro in southern Albania – which he commemorates in one of his most beautiful novels, “The Chronicle of the Stone City”. On one of my last visits to Albania I discovered a sign in his birthplace that read “Crazy Alley”. I knew this alley from Kadare’s novel and decided to take one of the stones of the street with me to Munich. Like him, so are the stories of Kadare’s works immortal.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas