Ismail Kadare was born on 28 January 1936 in Gjirokastër, Albania. He first studied at the Faculty of History and Philology at the University of Tirana and later at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. During the communist regime, Kadare attacked totalitarianism and the doctrines of socialist realism with subtle allegories. His political allegory
The Palace of Dreams was set in the Ottoman Empire's capital. Published in 1980, the book was almost immediately banned.
Kadare's novels draw on Balkan history and legends. They are obliquely ironic as a result of trying to withstand political scrutiny. Among his best known books are
Chronicle in Stone (1977),
Broken April (1978), and
The Concert (1988), considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine
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In 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of democratisation. During the ordeal, he stated that "dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."
Some critics are ambiguous as to whether Kadare was a dissident or a conformist during the communist period, even though books such as
The Palace of Dreams, are a brilliant denouncement of the tyranny and absurdity of the communist regime. In a political and literary environment completely and fiercely controlled by the state, Kadare's writing was, for many, the only view available that approached reality...let alone resistance.
When asked, whether he has ever claimed to be an Albanian Solzhenitsyn, Kadare has argued that such a role wasn't readily available under Hoxha's uniquely paranoid and insular regime. He has also been quoted as saying that he never claimed to be a dissident, that
"dissidence was a position no one could occupy, even for a few days, without facing the firing squad. On the other hand, my books themselves constitute a very obvious form of resistance."
In an interview on the Albanian Television with Blendi Fevziu in
Opinion, a popular Albanian show, Kadare said that the question as to whether he was or not a dissident
"was absurd, since he was a writer and a private person free to have his opinions, not someone elected from the people, therefore he was not accountable to anybody and did not feel like explaining or justifying whether he was a dissident or not."