Letrat - Kadare
Biografi anglisht
Albanian writer, frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, a leading figure of Albanian cultural life from the 1960s. During the terror of the Hoxha regime, Kadare attacked on totalitarianism and the doctrines of socialist realism with subtle allegories, although as a committed Marxist he officially supported the liberation of Albania from its backward past. Among Kadare's best-known works is The General of the Dead Army (1963). In the story an Italian general is immersed in his absurd and gruesome mission in Albania. He never realizes that he is as dead as the fallen soldiers of past wars.
The bodies of tens of thousands of soldiers buried beneath the earth had been waiting so many long years for his arrival, and now he was here at last, like a new Messiah, copiously provided with maps, with lists, with the infallible directions that would enable him to draw them up of the mud and restore them to their families. Other generals had led those interminable columns of soldiers into defeat and destruction. But he, he had come to wrest back from oblivion and death the few that remained. He was going to speed on from graveyard to graveyard, searching every field of battle in this country to recover those who had vanished. And in his campaign against the mud he would suffer no reverses; because at his back he had the magic power conferred by statistical exactitude. (from The General of the Dead Army) . Ismail Kadare was born in the museum-city of Gjirokastra, in southern Albania. His father worked in the civil service. Kadare grew up during the years of World War II, witnessing the occupation of his home country by fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. He attended primary and secondary schools in Gjirokastra, and went on to study languages and literature at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana. In 1956 Kadare received a teacher's diploma. He also studied at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow.
In 1961 Albania broke with the Soviet Union, and finally with all other countries, including China. From the cultural standstill arose a new generation of writers, among them Kadare, Fatos Arapi, and Dritero Agolli, who was for many years head of the Albanian Union of Writers, although his work was occasionally felt to be out of touch with the party line. In Albania Kadare first won fame as a poet. Writers hostile to Hoxha suffered persecution. Kadare's attitude to the Hoxha regime was ambiguous. His first novel, Gjenerali i ushtrise se vdekur (1963, The General of the Dead Army), is a study of postwar Albania and begins in a pouring rain. The general of the title is on a mission to Albania, years after the occupation and war, to dig up and repatriate the bones of his fellow soldiers, who had died in the country during World War II. I have a whole army of dead men under my command, he realizes bitterly. Before completing his work, the general suffers a nervous breakdown in a wedding feast. Dasma (1968, The Wedding) was well received in Albania. The heroine of the novel, a young peasant girl, is rescued from a traditional arranged marriage by factory work. She meets and marries a man she loves, thus breaking the traditions. Kadare served as a delegate to the People's Assembly in 1970 and he was given freedom to travel and to publish abroad. Kadare's Chronicle in Stone (1971) was praised by John Updike in The New Yorker as sophisticated and accomplished in its poetic prose and narrative deftness. In Keshtjella (1970, The Castle), a story of Albania's struggle against the Ottoman Turks, and Ura me tri harqe (1978, The Three-Arched The Bridge), an account of the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a river, Kadare depicted the feudal Albania. After offending the authorities with a politically satirical poem in 1975, he was forbidden to publish for three years. In Broken April (1978), a story about the blood feud, Kadare returned to one of his favorite themes - how the past affects the present. Gjorg came out of the concealment and walked towards the body. The road was deserted. The only sound was the sound of his own footsteps. The dead man had fallen in a heap. Gjorg bent down and laid his hand on the man's shoulder, as if to wake him. 'What am I doing?' he said to himself. He gripped the dead man's shoulder again, as if he wanted to bring him back to life. 'Why am I doing this?' he thought.
Nenpunesi i pallatit te endrrave (1981, The Palace of Dreams) was a political allegory of totalitarianism, set in an Ottoman capital. The central character is a young man, Mark-Alem, whose job is to select, sort, and interpret the dreams of the imperial populace in order to discover the master-dream that will predict the overthrow of the rulers. The basically humorous novel for others than the Albanian authorities was almost immediately banned after its publication. In 1982 Kadare was accused by the president of the League of Albanian Writers and Artists of deliberately evading politics by cloaking much of his fiction in history and folklore.
Hoxha died in 1985, and his successor, Ramiz Ali, was a less powerful figure. In October 1991, a few months before the collapse of the communist regime, Kadare emigrated to Paris where he has lived with his family ever since. Koncert ne fund te dimrit (1988, The Concert) was considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire. The story is laid against Albania's break with China. In exile Kadare has expressed his disappointment and bitterness. La Pyramide (1992), written in French, was set in Egypt in the twenty-sixth century B.C. and after. In the novel Kadare mocked Hoxha's fondness for elaborate statutes, the pyramid form also reflecting any dictators love for hierarchy.
For further reading: Ismail Kadare, le rhapsode albanais by Anne-Marie Mitchel (1990); Eric Faye: Ismail Kadare by Eric Faye (1991); Contemporary Albanian Literature by A. Pipa (1991); Ismail Kadare by Fabienne Terpan (1992); Uviversi letrar i Kadarese by T. Caushi (1993); Ekskursion ne dy vepra te Kadarese by I. Zamputi (1993); Nje fund dhe nje fillim by R. Elsie (1995); World Authors 1985-1990, ed. by Vineta Colby (1995); Studies in Modern Albanian Literature and Culture by R. Elsie (1996); Pengu i moskuptimit by S. Sinani (1997); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999) - For further information: Ismail Kadare - The Three Acts of Kosove Tragedy by Ismail Kadare - Note: Kadare's birthdate is in some sources Jan. 28, 1936 or Jan. 26, 1936. In this calendar: Jan. 27, 1936.
Man Booker International and Ismail Kadare
THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2005
Judges' List Announced
www.manbookerinternational.com
Eighteen authors have made it on to the Judges' List of contenders for the first ever Man Booker International Prize. They come from thirteen countries and ten are writers in translation. The Judges' List was announced by the chair of judges, Professor John Carey, at a press conference at Georgetown University, Washington, DC today (Friday 18th February, 2005). The eighteen authors on the list are:
Margaret Atwood, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gunter Grass, Ismail Kadare,
Milan Kundera, Stanislaw Lem, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Naguib Mahfouz, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Kenzaburo Oe, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, Antonio Tabucchi, John Updike and A.B. Yehoshua
The judging panel for the 2005 Man Booker International Prize is: Professor John Carey (Chair); writer, novelist and editor, Alberto Manguel; and writer and academic, Azar Nafisi. Professor John Carey comments: "For us, these are eighteen authors who combine uniqueness and universality and remind us irresistibly of the joy of reading." The Man Booker Prize has a long-standing relationship with Georgetown University via a course taught by Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., on the topic of the prize. Since 1995, Fr. Ribeiro has taught advanced seminars at Georgetown entitled "Booker Prize Novels", in which students study Man Booker Prize novels and analyse the cultural, commercial and literary factors that impact on the prize's judges, authors and sponsors. Harvey McGrath, Chairman, Man Group plc comments: "From our early meetings with the Trustees of the Booker Prize Foundation, it has been clear that we all share a common desire to more widely encourage interest in contemporary fiction by raising the Man Booker profile internationally. We are delighted to see that shared aspiration become reality today with the publication of the Judges' List of Contenders for the first Man Booker International Prize. We are particularly pleased to be making today's announcement in the historic surroundings of Washington's Georgetown University both because of the long-standing relationships we have had here, and because this venue underlines the international character of the Prize. "We are confident that the Man Booker International Prize will swiftly establish itself as an important part of the global literary landscape." The Man Booker International Prize was announced in June 2004 and will recognize one writer for his or her achievement in fiction. Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize will be awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. The first winner of The Man Booker International Prize 2005 will be announced in June in London and the prize will be awarded at a dinner later that month. The prize is sponsored by the Man Group, which also sponsors the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The Man Booker International Prize differs from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlights one writer's continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. Both prizes strive to recognise and reward literary excellence.
The Judges
John Carey is the UK's most eminent literary critic. He is also a broadcaster and the author of many books. He was Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1976-2001 and chaired the Booker Prize in 1982 and in 2003. Azar Nafisi is a visiting fellow, professorial lecturer, and the director of The Dialogue Project: The Culture of Democracy in Muslim Societies at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. Alberto Manguel is a writer, novelist, translator and editor. He has received numerous awards and honours from around the world, including the Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2004), Premio German Sanchez Ruiperez for best literary criticism (Spain, 2002) and the Prix Roger Caillois (France, 2004). He has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
For up to date information, please visit
www.manbookerinternational.com
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Notes to Editors
The Man Booker International Prize is unique in the world of literature in that it can be won by an author of any nationality, providing that his or her work is available in the English language. Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize will be awarded once every two years to a living author. An author can only win the award once. Georgetown University is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in America, founded in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll. Georgetown today is a major student-centered, international, research university offering respected undergraduate, graduate and professional programs on its three campuses. For more information about Georgetown University, visit www.georgetown.edu.
The Administrator of the Man Booker International Prize is Ion Trewin, currently Deputy Administrator of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Photographs of the judges are available from Colman Getty PR. Colman Getty PR handles PR and event management for the prize and provides administrative back-up. The Man Booker International Prize website includes detailed information about all aspects of the prize and runs regular news bulletins: www.manbookerinternational.com
The Man Booker International Prize was announced in June 2004 and will recognize one writer for their achievement in fiction. Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize will be awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. The trustees of the Booker Prize Foundation are former Chairman of Booker plc, Jonathan Taylor CBE (Chairman); playwright Ronald Harwood CBE; Baroness Kennedy QC; writer, Rabbi Dame Julia Neuberger; MEP Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne; and former Finance Director of Rentokil plc, Christopher Pearce. Man Group plc is a leading global provider of alternative investment products and solutions as well as one of the world's largest futures brokers. The Group employs over 2,800 people in 15 countries, with key centres in London, Peffikon (Switzerland), Chicago, New York, Paris, Singapore and Sydney. Man Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EMG.L) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Man Investments, the Asset Management division, is a global leader in the fast growing alternative investments industry. It provides innovative products and tailor-made solutions for private and institutional investors. Man Financial, the Brokerage division, is one of the world's leading providers of brokerage services. It acts as a broker of futures, options and other equity derivatives for both institutional and private clients, and as an intermediary in the world's metals, energy and foreign exchange markets with offices in key financial centres. Booker is the UK's leading cash & carry operator with 173 branches serving 450,000 retailers and caterers across the country. For further information and press enquiries please contact: Mark Hutchinson, Sophie Rochester or Truda Spruyt
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The Judges' List of Contenders for the 2005 Man Booker International Prize
Please note that the following information is derived from secondary sources and should be checked for accuracy.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College. She currently lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson. Throughout her thirty years of writing, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and several honorary degrees. She is the author of more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, one of which, The Blind Assassin won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's work has been published in more than thirty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.
Fiction
The Edible Woman 1969
Surfacing 1973
Lady Oracle 1977
Life Before Man 1980
Bodily Harm 1982
The Handmaid's Tale 1986
Cat's Eye 1989
The Robber Bride 1993
Alias Grace 1997
The Blind Assassin 2000
Oryx and Crake 2003
Short Fiction
Dancing Girls and Other Stories 1982
Murder in the Dark, Short Fictions and Prose Poems 1984
Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories 1987
Wilderness Tips 1991
Good Bones 1992
Poems
Selected Poems 1965-1975 Virago, 1991
Selected Poems II 1976-1986 Virago 1992
Morning in the Burned House Virago, 1995
The Journals of Susanna Moodie Bloomsbury 1997
Eating Fire: Selected Poems 1965-1995 Virago, 1998
Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto
Publisher Contact: McClelland & Stewart (Canada) (416) 598 1114; Bloomsbury (UK) (020) 7494 2111
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SAUL BELLOW
Saul Bellow was born in Canada in 1915 and grew up in Chicago. He attended Chicago, Northwestern and Wisconsin universities and has a B.Sc. in anthropology. He has been a visiting lecturer at the universities of Princeton and New York and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. He has also lived in Paris and travelled extensively in Europe. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and he has received a grant from the Ford Foundation. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and was elected the third Neil Gunn Fellow by the Scottish Arts Council in 1976. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, the first American to win the prize since John Steinbeck in 1962. In 1977 Saul Bellow won the Gold Medal for the Novel, which is awarded every sixth year by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 he won the (USA) National Arts Club Gold Medal of Honor. In 1984 President Mitterrand made him a Commander of the Legion of Honour.
Fiction
Dangling Man 1944
The Victim 1948
The Adventures of Augie March 1953
Herzog 1964
Mr Sammler's Planet 1970
Seize the Day 1956
Henderson the Rain King 1959
The Last Analysis 1966
Humboldt's Gift 1975
To Jerusalem and Back 1976
More Die of Heartbreak 1987
A Theft 1989
The Bellarosa Connection 1989
Something to Remember Me By 1991
It All Adds Up 1995
Ravelstein 2000
Saul Bellow lives in America
Publisher Contact: Penguin(USA); (UK) 020 7010 3000
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
Gabriel Garcia Mqrquez was born in 1928 in the small town of Aracataca, situated in a tropical region of northern Colombia. He went to a Jesuit college and began to read law, but his studies were soon broken off for his work as a journalist. In 1954 he was sent to Rome on an assignment for his newspaper, and since then he has mostly lived abroad - in Paris, New York, Barcelona and Mexico. In addition to his large output of fiction he has written screenplays and has continued to work as a journalist. In 1981 Garcia Marquez was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the highest decoration France gives to a foreigner. In 1982, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and used the money to start a daily newspaper, El Otro, in Colombia.
Fiction
Leaf Storm, and Other Stories 1955
No One Writes to the Colonel 1961
An Evil Hour (La mala hora) 1962
Big Mama's Funeral, 1961
One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967
Innocent Erendira, and Other Stories 1972
The Autumn of the Patriarch 1975
Chronicle of a Death Foretold 1981
Collected Stories 1984 New York
Love in the Time of Cholera 1988
Collected Novellas 1990
The General in his Labyrinth 1991
News of a Kidnapping 1996
Memories of my Melancholy Whores 2005
Short stories
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World 1971
Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles 1972
The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship 1972
Death Constant Beyond Love 1973
The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother 1973
The Sea of Lost Time 1974
Eyes of a Blue Dog 1978
The Night of the Curlews 1978
Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses 1978
The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock 1978
Artificial Roses 1984
Balthazar's Marvellous Afternoon 1984
Big Mama's Funeral 1984
Bitterness for Three Sleepwalkers 1984
Dialogue with the Mirror 1984
Eva is Inside Her Cat 1984
Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo 1984
Montiel's Widow 1984
Nabo: The Black Man Who Made the Angels Wai 1984
One Day After Saturday 1984
One of These Days 1984
The Other Side of Death 1984
There Are No Thieves in This Town 1984
The Third Resignation 1984
Tuesday Siesta 1984
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings 1984
The Saint 1992
The Ghosts of August 1993
Caribe Mágico 1996
Plays
Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man 1988
Publisher Contact: Penguin (UK) 020 7010 3000
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GUNTER GRASS
Born in Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland) Gunter Grass was educated at Danzig Volksschule and Gymnasium, and went to art college after serving as a soldier in the Second World War, where he was held as a POW. Grass trained as a sculptor and stonemason and has also worked as a jazz musician and political speechwriter for the mayor of Berlin. The publication of The Tin Drum catapulted Grass to the forefront of European fiction. Since that novel his work has moved from fantastical symbolism towards political activism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.
Fiction
The Tin Drum 1970
The Flounder 1980
The Rat 1987
Cat and Mouse 1997
Dog Years 1997
My Century 2001
Crabwalk 2004
Plans
The Plebians Rehearse the Uprising 1967
Gunter Grass lives in Germany
Publisher Contact: Faber & Faber (UK) (020) 7465 0045
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ISMAIL KADARE
Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in the Albanian mountain town of Girokaster near the Greek border. He 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.
Fiction
The General of the Dead Army 1963
The Wedding 1968
The Castle 1970
Chronicle in Stone 1971
The Great Winter 1977
The Three-Arched Bridge 1978
Broken April 1978
On the Lay of the Knights 1979
The Autobiography of the People in Verse 1980
Doruntine 1980
The Palace of Dreams 1981
The Concert 1988
Albanian Spring 1991
The Pyramid 1991
Elegy for Kosovo 2000
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost 2002
The File on H. 2002
Ismail Kadare lives in France
Publisher Contact: Vintage (UK) (020) 7840 8400
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MILAN KUNDERA
Milan Kundera was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1929. He was a student when the Czech Communist regime was established in 1948. He later worked as a labourer, jazz musician and professor at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Prague. After the Russian invasion in August 1968, his books were proscribed. In 1975, he and his wife settled in France, and in 1981, he became a French citizen.
Poetry
Man: A Broad Garden 1953
The Last May 1954
Monologues 1957
Plays
The Owner of the Keys 1962
Two Ears,Two Weddings (Slowness) 1968
The Blunder 1969
Jaques and His Master 1971
Fiction
The Joke 1965
Laughable Loves 1969
Life is Elsewhere 1969/70
The Farewell Waltz 1970/71
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 1978
The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1982
Immortality 1988
Slowness 1994
Identity 1996
Ignorance 2000
Essays
About the Disputes of Inheritance 1955
The Art of the Novel 1960
The Czech Deal 1968
Radicalism and Exhibitionism 1969
The Stolen West or the Tragedy of Central Europe 1983
The Art of the Novel 1985
Testaments Betrayed 1992
Milan Kundera lives in France
Publisher Contact: Faber & Faber (UK) (020) 7465 0045
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STANISLAW LEM
Born in 1921 in Lvov, Poland, Stanislaw Lem is the author of novels, short stories, literary criticism, philosophy, parodies and screenplays. His work has been translated into 41 languages. Lem is the recipient of many literary awards, most notably the State Prize for Literature in Poland 1976 and the Austrian State Award for European Literature 1985.
Fiction
Solaris 1970
The Invincible 1973
Memoirs Found in a Bathroom 1973
The Cyberiad 1974
The Futurological Congres 1974
The Investigation 1974
The Star Diaries 1976
The Chain of Chance 1978
Return from the Stars 1980
Memoirs of a Space Traveller 1982
His Master's Voice 1983
Fiasco 1987
Hospital of the Tranfiguration 1988
Eden 1989
Highcastle a Remembrance 1995
Peace on Earth 1995
Short Fiction
Mortal Engines 1977
Tales of Pirx the Pilot 1979
The Cosmic Carnival 1981
Essays
A Perfect Vacuum 1979
Imaginary Magnitude 1984
One Human Minute 1985
Microworlds: Writings on Science, Fiction and Fantasy 1985
Stanislaw Lem lives in Poland.
Publisher Contact: Faber & Faber (UK) (020) 7465 0045
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DORIS LESSING
Doris Lessing was born in Persia to British parents in 1919. She spent her childhood on her father's farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia. She arrived in England in 1949, when her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published. Doris Lessing has travelled or lived briefly in France, Italy, Spain, Russia and Czechoslovakia. Her books have been translated into many languages from French to Russian. Lessing's collection of short novels called Five earned her the Somerset Maugham Award in 1954 and her play Play with a Tiger was presented in the West End in 1962. In 1982 she received the Austrian State Prize for Literature and the Shakespeare Prize, Hamburg. Doris Lessing has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times: Briefing For a Descent in to Hell(1971), The Sirian Experiments(1981) and The Good Terrorist(1985) which also won the WH Smith Award in 1985. In August 1991, she received an honorary title of Distinguished Fellow in Literature in the School of English and American Studies conferred by University of East Anglia.
Fiction
The Grass Is Singing 1950
Martha Quest 1952
A Proper Marriage 1954
Retreat to Innocence 1956
The Habit of Loving 1957
A Ripple from the Storm 1958
The Golden Notebook 1962
A Man and Two Women 1963
Landlocked 1965
Winter in July 1966
Particularly Cats 1967
The Four-Gated City 1969
Briefing for a Descent into Hell 1971
The Sun Between Their Feet 1973
The Summer before the Dark 1973
The Black Madonna 1974
The Memoirs of a Survivor 1974
The Diary Of A Good Neighbour 1983
The Diaries of Jane Somers 1984
If The Old Could 1984
The Good Terrorist 1985
The Fifth Child 1988
Playing the Game 1993
Love, Again 1995
Mara and Dann: An Adventure 1998
The Old Age of El Magnifico: A Cat's Tale 2000
Ben, in the World 2000
The Sweetest Dream 2001
The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog 2005
Collections
This Was the Old Chief's Country 1951
Five: Short Novels 1953
Fourteen Poems (poems) 1959
Nine African Stories 1968
Story Of A Non-Marrying Man: And Other Stories 1972
The Temptation of Jack Orkney: And Other Stories 1972
African Stories 1976
Stories 1978
To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories of Doris Lessing: Vol.1 1978
The Doris Lessing Reader 1988
London Observed: Stories And Sketches 1992
The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches 1992
Spies I Have Known 1995
Problems, Myths and Stories 1999
The Grandmothers 2003
Non fiction
Going Home 1957
In Pursuit of the English 1960
A Small Personal Voice: Essays, Reviews, Interviews 1974
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside 1986
African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe 1992
Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography to 1949 1994
Walking In The Shade: 1949 to 1962 1996
On Cats 2002
Time Bites: Views and Reviews 2004
Short stories
The Antheap 1953
Eldorado 1953
A Home for Highland Cattle 1953
Hunger 1953
The Other Woman 1953
Plants and Girls 1957
Report on the Threatened City 1971
Between Men 1988
England Versus England 1988
The Eye of God in Paradise 1988
The Habit of Loving 1988
Homage for Isaac Babel 1988
How I Finally Lost My Heart 1988
A Letter from Home 1988
The Old Chief Mshlanga 1988
The Words He Said 1988
Doris Lessing lives in the UK
Publisher Contact: Harper Collins (UK) (020) 8741 7070
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IAN McEWAN
Ian McEwan was born on 21 June, 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He spent much of his childhood in the Far East, Germany and North Africa where his father, an officer in the army, was posted. He read English at Sussex University and, after graduating, became the first student on the MA Creative Writing course established at the University of East Anglia by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. He currently lives in London. McEwan won the Somerset Maugham Award for First Love, Last Rites and the Booker Prize for Fiction with Amsterdam in 1998.
Fiction
First Love, Last Rites 1975
In Between the Sheets 1978
The Cement Garden 1978
The Comfort of Strangers 1981
The Child in Time 1987
The Innocent 1990
Black Dogs 1992
The Daydreamer 1994
The Short Stories 1995
Enduring Love 1997
Amsterdam 1998
Atonement 2001
Saturday 2005
Plays
The Imitation Game (three plays for television: Jack Flea's Birthday Celebration; Solid Geometry; The Imitation Game) 1981
Scripts
The Ploughman's Lunch 1985
Sour Sweet 1988
Or Shall We Die? (Libretto for an oratorio set to music by Michael Berkeley) 1983
Non Fiction
On Modern British Fiction (contributor: 'Mother Tongue - A Memoir') 2002
Ian McEwan lives in the UK
Publisher Contact: Jonathan Cape (UK) (020) 7840 8400
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NAGUIB MAHFOUZ
Born in Cairo in 1911, Naguib Mahfouz began writing when he was seventeen. His first novel was published in 1939 and ten more were written before the Egyptian Revolution of July 1952, when he stopped writing for several years. The appearance of the Cairo Triology, (Between-the-Palaces, Palace of Longing, Sugarhouse) in 1957 made him famous throughout the Arab world as a depictor of traditional urban life. Until 1972, Mahfouz was employed as a civil servant, first in the Ministry of Mortmain Endowments, then as Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art, as Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and, finally, as consultant on Cultural Affairs to the Ministry of Culture. Now retired, he is now the author of no fewer than thirty novels, more than a hundred short stories, and more than two hundred articles. Half of his novels have been made into films which have circulated throughout the Arabic-speaking world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.
Fiction
Between the Palaces 1953
Palace of Longing 1953
Sugarhouse 1953
Fountain and Tomb: A Novel 1988
Wedding Song 1989
The Thief and the Dogs 1985
The Beginning and the End 1985
Respected Sir 1990
The Day the Leader was Killed 1990
The Time and the Place and Other Stories 1991
The Journey of Ibn Fattouma 1993
Adrift on the Nile 1993
Miramar 1993
The Harafish 1994
Arabian Nights and Days 1995
Children of the Alley 1996
Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth 2000
Thebes at War 2004
The Dreams 2005
Naguib Mahfouz lives in Egypt
Publisher Contact: Doubleday Books (US) Transworld (UK) 020 8579 2652
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TOMAS ELOY MARTINEZ
Tomas Eloy Martinez was born in 1934 in Argentina. During the military dictatorship, he lived in exile in Venezuela where he wrote his first three books, all of which were republished in Argentina in 1983, in the first months of democracy. During a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for International Scholars, Martinez wrote The Peron Novel, which was published in 1988. Currently he is a professor and director of the Latin American Program at Rutgers University.
Fiction
The Peron Novel (La novela de Peron) 1988
Saint Evita (Santa Evita) 1997
Tomas Eloy Martinez lives in America
Publisher Contact: Alfaguera Ediciones (Spain)/Vintage (USA) (212) 782 9000 Transworld (UK) 020 8579 2652
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KENZABURO OE
A novelist, essayist, and short story writer, Oe was born in 1935 on the Japanese island of Shikoku. After a childhood shaped by family storytelling and war, he attended Tokyo University and studied French literature. A prolific writer, Oe addresses the themes of family, childhood, and war. At age 23, Oe published his first novel, Pluck the Flowers, Gun the Kids. That same year, he won the Akutagawa Prize for The Catch, a short novel about a small boy's relationship with an African-American pilot captured in his village. A Personal Matter was inspired by his own family's experiences in raising a mentally-challenged child. The work earned him the Shinohosha Literary Prize. Hiroshima Notes (1963) analyzes the ethical implications of atomic war, informed by his interviews with doctors and patients who suffered the effects of the bombing. His 1967 novel Football in the First Year of Mannen received the Tanizaki Prize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.
Fiction
Pluck the Flowers, Gun the Kids 1958
The Youth Who Came Late 1961
The Hazards of Everyday Life 1963
A Personal Matter 1964
The Silent Cry 1967
Football in the First Year of Mannen 1967
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness 1969
My Deluged Soul 1973
The Flood Reaches My Soul 1973
The Pinch Runner's Record 1976
Contemporary Games 1979
Awake, New Man 1983
Letters to the Time/Space of Fond Memories 1987
Towers of Healing
An Echo of Heaven
A Healing Matter
A Quiet Life
The Burning Green Tree
Until the Savior Gets Beaten 1993
Vacillating 1994
On the Great Day 1995
Somersault 2004
Short Stories
The Catch 1957
Lavish Are the Dead 1957
Short Story and Novella Collections
Look Before You Leap 1958
Essays
Hiroshima Notes 1965
Okinawa Notes 1970
Japan's Dual Identity: A Writer's Dilemma 1988
Kenzaburo Oe lives in Japan
Publisher Contact: Atlantic Books 020 7269 1610
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CYNTHIA OZICK
Cynthia Ozick was born in Manhattan and has lived in the New York City area most of her life. She attended Hunter College High School, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from New York University with honors in English, and holds a master's degree from Ohio State University. She lives in Westchester County and is married to Bernard Hallote, a retired lawyer. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for her novel, The Puttermesser Papers, which was named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. The essay collection Quarrel & Quandry, won the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Ozick's work has been translated into thirteen languages worldwide. Her novella The Shawl was produced for the stage in New York, directed by Sidney Lumet. Her many awards include a Guggenheim fellowship and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She was the first writer to be given the Rea Award for the Short Story.
Fiction
Trust 1966
The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories 1971
The Cannibal Galaxy 1983
The Messiah of Stockholm 1987
The Shawl 1989
The Puttermesser Papers 1997
Heir To The Glimmering World (USA 2004); The Bear Boy (UK 2005)
Poetry
Epodes: The First Poems 1992
Non Fiction
Art & Ardor: Essays 1983
Metaphor & Memory: Essays 1989
Portrait of the Artist as a Bad Character and Other Essays on Writing 1994
Fame and Folly 1996
Quarrel & Quandry 2000
Cynthia Ozick lives in America
Publisher Contact: Houghton Mifflin Company (US); Weidenfeld & Nicholson (UK) Lisa Shakespeare Tel: 020 7 520 4462
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PHILIP ROTH
Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933, the son of an insurance salesman and the grandchild of European Jewish immigrants. He was educated at Bucknell University and the University of Chicago. After spending a year in the army, Roth began publishing short stories in 1956. His first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959) won the National Book Award, and since then he has published twenty-two books. In the 1990s, Roth won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), and the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995). American Pastoral (1997) and I Married A Communist (1998), the first two volumes of the American trilogy that culminates in The Human Stain, received the Pulitzer Prize and the Ambassador Book Award respectively. The Human Stain was a PEN/Faulkner Award Winner, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and a Voice Literary Supplement, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angles Times Best Book. Philip Roth also received the Jewish Book Council Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement. For many years, Roth taught comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He now lives and writes in Connecticut.
Fiction
Letting Go 1962
When She Was Good 1967
Portnoy's Complaint 1969
Our Gang: Starring Tricky And His Friends 1971
The Breast 1973
The Great American Novel 1973
My Life as a Man 1974
The Professor of Desire 1977
The Ghost Writer 1979
Zuckerman Unbound 1981
The Anatomy Lesson 1983
Prague Orgy 1985
American West's Acid Rain Test 1985
The Counterlife 1987
Deception 1990
Patrimony: A True Story 1991
Operation Shylock: A Confession 1993
Sabbath's Theater 1995
His Mistress's Voice 1995
American Pastoral 1997
I Married a Communist 1998
The Human Stain 2000
The Dying Animal 2001
The Plot Against America 2004
Collections
Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories 1959
Non fiction
Reading Myself and Others 1975
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography 1988
Masonry in the Formation of Our Government 1761-1799 1995
Shop Talk: A Writer And His Colleagues And Their Work 2001
Philip Roth lives in America
Publisher Contact: Jonathan Cape (UK) (020) 7840 8400
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MURIEL SPARK
Muriel Spark was born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh in 1918 to a Jewish Lithuanian father and an English Protestant mother. She was educated at the Edinburgh James Gillespie's School for Girls. After leaving school, Spark took a course in précis writing at the Heriott Watt College in Edinburgh. In 1937 Muriel Camberg married Sydney Oswald Spark and they had a son, Samuel. For several years of her marriage Spark lived in Central Africa. During the Second World War, Spark was conscripted to the Political Intelligence Department of the British Foreign Office where she worked as a propagandist for the war effort. After the war she lived in London, where she began her literary career. She edited The Poetry Review from1947-9 and wrote studies of Mary Shelley, John Masefield and the Bronte sisters. In 1952 she published her first book, a collection of poetry entitled The Fanfarlo and Other Verse but it was her winning of the Observer prize for short fiction that finally inspired her to write fiction full-time. Her first published novel, The Comforters was written three years after Spark converted to Roman Catholicism and the novel was inspired by her studies on the Book of Job. In 1967 Spark took up residence in Italy where she now resides, moving between Rome and New York. In 1971 she was awarded an honorary degree in literature from Strathclyde University and has been similarly honoured by the Universities of Aberdeen, St Andrews, Edinburgh and Oxford. Heriot Watt also attributed her as a Doctor of the University. In 1993 Spark was made a Dame of the British Empire and in 1997 she received the David Cohen British Literature Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
Fiction
Novels
The Comforters 1954
Robinson 1958
Memento Mori 1959
The Ballad of Peckham Rye 1960
The Bachelors 1960
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 1961
The Girls of Slender Means 1963
The Mandelbaum Gate 1965
The Very Fine Clock 1968
The Public Image 1968
The Driver's Seat 1970
Not to Disturb 1971
The Hothouse by the East River 1973
The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale 1974
The Takeover 1976
Territorial Rights 1979
Loitering with Intent 1981
The Only Problem 1984
A Far Cry from Kensington 1988
Symposium 1990
Reality and Dreams 1996
The Quest for Lavishes Ghast 1998
Aiding and Abetting 2000
The Finishing School 2004
Collections
The Fanfarlo: And Other Verse 1952
The Go-Away Bird: And Other Stories 1958
Collected Stories 1967
Bang-Bang You're Dead 1982
Going Up To Sotheby's 1982
The Stories of Muriel Spark 1985
The Collected Stories of Muriel Spark 1994
The Young Man Who Discovered The Secret of Life: And Other Stories 1998
Selected Stories 2001
The Complete Short Stories 2001
All the Stories of Muriel Spark 2001
The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark 2003
All the Poems of Muriel Spark 2004
Non fiction
Emily Bronte 1966
Mary Shelley 1987
John Masefield 1992
Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography 1992
Child of Light : Mary Shelley 2002
Short stories
The Leaf-Sweeper 1956
The Portobello Road 1956
The Girl I Left Behind Me 1957
Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse 1958
The House of the Famous Poet 1966
Muriel Spark lives in Italy
Publisher Contact: Penguin (UK) (020) 7010 3000
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ANTONIO TABUCCHI
Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa in 1943. His first work of fiction appeared in 1975 and since then he has published over a dozen novels, collections of short stories and theatrical dialogues in a career that has made him one of the most representative of contemporary Italian writers. He is Professor of Portugese language and literature at the University of Genoa and recognised as the leading Italian scholar in this field. He is a specialist on the work of Fernando Pessoa, whom he has translated into Italian.
Fiction
Piazza d'Italia 1975
Il piccolo naviglio 1978
Letter from Casablanca 1981
Donna di Porto Pim 1983
Indian Nocturne 1984
Little Misunderstandings of No Importance
(Piccoli equivoci senza importanza) 1987
I volatili del Beato Angelico 1987
The Edge of the Horizon
(Il filo dell'orizzonte) 1986
Requiem 1990
Dreams of Dreams
(Sogni di sogni) 1992
Pereira Declares
(Sostiene Pereira) 1994
The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro
(La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro) 1997
Non fiction
The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa
(Gli ultimi tre giorni di Fernando Pessoa) 1994
Antonio Tabucchi lives in Italy
Publisher Contact: WW Norton & Company (USA) UK Publicity office – 020 7436 4553
Agent Contact: Antonella Antonelli 0039 02 8645 1557
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JOHN UPDIKE
John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. He is the father of four children and the author of over forty books, including collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal.
Fiction
The Poorhouse Fair 1959
Rabbit Run 1960
The Centaur 1963
Of the Farm 1965
Couples 1968
Pens and Needles 1970
Bech: A Book 1970
Rabbit Redux 1971
A Month of Sundays 1975
Picked Up Pieces 1975
Marry Me: A Romance 1977
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu 1977
The Coup 1978
An Oddly Lovely Day Alone 1979
Talk from the Fifties 1979
Your Lover Just Called 1980
The chaste planet (Metacom's series) 1980
Rabbit Is Rich 1981
Bech Is Back 1982
The Complete Henry Bech 1993
The Witches of Eastwick 1984
A and P 1986
Roger's Version 1986
More Stately Mansions 1987
S 1988
Brother Grasshopper (Metacom Series Number 12) 1990
Rabbit at Rest 1990
Concert at Castle Hill 1992
Memories of the Ford Administration 1992
Brazil 1994
Classic Erotic Tales 1994
In the Beauty of the Lilies 1996
Toward the End of Time 1997
Bech At Bay: A Quasi-novel 1998
Basic Bech 1999
Gertrude and Claudius 2000
Humor in Fiction 2000
Seek My Face 2002
Villages 2004
Four Trips: The Short-Story Writer as Tourist 2005
Plays
Buchanan Dying 1974
Collections
Carpentered Hen And Other Tame Creatures 1958
The Same Door 1959
Hoping for a Hoopoe (poems) 1959
Pigeon Feathers: And Other Stories 1962
Telephone Poles (poems) 1963
Olinger Stories 1964
Assorted Prose 1965
The Music School 1966
Midpoint And Other Poems (poems) 1969
Seventy Poems (poems) 1972
Museums And Women: And Other Stories 1972
Six Poems (poems) 1973
Tossing and Turning (poems) 1977
Problems and Other Stories 1979
Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories 1980
The Other John Updike: Poems, Short Stories, Prose, Plays 1982
Facing Nature (poems) 1985
Trust Me: Short Stories 1987
Forty Stories 1987
The Afterlife: And Other Stories 1987
Selected Stories 1988
A Child's Calendar (poems) 1989
In Memoriam, Felis Felis (poems) 1989
Collected Poems 1953-1993 1993
Friends from Philadelphia: And Other Stories 1995
A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects (poems) 1998
Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel 2000
Americana: And Other Poems (poems) 2001
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 2003
The Golden West: Hollywood Stories 2005
Non fiction
People One Knows: Interviews with Insufficiently Famous Americans 1980
Hugging the Shore 1983
Self Consciousness: Memoirs 1989
Just Looking: Essays On Art 1989
Odd Jobs: Essays And Criticism 1991
Golf Dreams: Writings On Golf 1996
More Matter: Essays And Criticism 1999
On Literary Biography 1999
A Century of Arts and Letters 2002
Lectures on Literature 2002
Short stories
A and P 1962
Jesus on Honshu 1987
John Updike lives in America
Publisher Contact: Knopf (USA) (212) 782 9000; Hamish Hamilton (UK) (020) 7010 3000
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A.B. YEHOSHUA
A.B. Yehoshua was born in 1936 in Jerusalem and today lives in Haifa where he is Professor of Literature at Haifa University. He studied Hebrew literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has taught at high-school and university levels, and in Paris while living there from 1963 to 1967. Best known as a novelist and playwright, A.B. Yehoshua is among the most widely internationally recognized Israeli authors.
Fiction
The Lover 1977
A Late Divorce 1982
Five Seasons 1987
Mr. Mani 1990
Open Heart (The Return from India) 1994
Voyage to the End of the Millennium 1997
The Liberated Bride 2001
The Mission of the Human Resource Man 2004
Short Stories
The Death of the Old Man 1962
Facing the Forests 1968
9 Stories 1971
Early in Summer 1970 1972
Three Days and a Child 1975
The Continuing Silence of a Poet: The Collected Stories of A.B. Yehoshua 1988
Plays
An Evening in May 1975
Possessions 1986
Babies of the Night 1992
Essays
The Terrible Power of a Minor Guilt 1998
A.B. Yehoshua lives in Israel
Publisher Contact: Peter Halban (UK) (020) 7437 9300
Ismail Kadare Wins Innaugural Man Booker
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Noted Albanian poet and novelist Ismail Kadare has won the first-ever Man Booker International Prize, thus gaining recognition as one of the world's finest writers.
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Ismail Kadare won the Innaugural Man Booker Award © BBC |
The 69-year-old Kadare was chosen for the inaugural award for his body of work, which includes novels like Broken April, Spring Frost and The General Of The Dead Army.
"Ismail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture -- its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters," critic John Carey, who led a three-member panel of judges, said. "He is a universal writer in a tradition of story-telling that goes back to Homer."
Kadare will receive a prize of 60,000 pounds plus a trophy in a ceremony at Edinburgh on June 27, with an extra 15,000 pounds for a translator of his choice.
According to a statement, Kadare, who fled to France in 1990 as a refugee before the collapse of dictator Enver Hoxha's Communist regime, said: 'I feel deeply honoured. I am a writer from the Balkan fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness -- armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on.'
Eighteen other authors were shortlisted for the honour, including the late Saul Bellow, Germany's Gunter Grass, Czech-born Milan Kundera, Egypt's Naguib Mahfouz, US writers Philip Roth and John Updike and Canada's Margaret Atwood. |
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Ismail Kadare: lost in translation?
Magnus Linklater
So few foreign writers can be read in English, you have probably missed this genius |
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THREE DISTINGUISHED literary critics meet to determine which novelist is the greatest of the modern era. They travel from Rome to Washington, and end up in a converted medieval priory in France, where one of their number has built up a magnificent library. They begin with a list of 120 writers and whittle it down to 18. This is reduced to 17 when the death of Saul Bellow is announced.
Because this is the first Man Booker International prize, the only condition is that any work they choose must have been translated into English and be available to the general public. For the critics John Carey, from England, Azar Nafisi, from Iran, and Alberto Manguel, from Argentina this is a serious barrier. Time and again they are forced to discard major writers whose novels are simply unobtainable in translation: the Austrian novelist Peter Handke, whose books inspired the films of Wim Wenders; Michel Tournier, the most influential French writer of the past 25 years; Christoph Ransmayr, who shared Europe’s most prestigious new literary award, the Aristeion Prize, with Salman Rushdie; António Lobo Antunes, the brilliant Portuguese writer; the roll-call went on and on.
Finally, after considering a formidable list, which includes Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gunter Grass, Milan Kundera and John Updike, they opt for Ismail Kadar, the Albanian novelist. The announcement catches bookstores in Britain by surprise. Not a copy of his work can be found in Edinburgh, where the prize is to be awarded. It takes a week to round up enough to be available in time for the ceremony. As Professor Carey put it, in the course of an excoriating presentation speech on Monday night: “To an outsider, the British publishing industry can seem like a conspiracy intent on depriving English-speaking readers of the majority of good books written in languages other than their own.”
He spoke of a novel by Antonio Tabucchi Pereira Declares as one which, in the view of all the judges, “came close to being a perfect novel ” brief, tragic, inspiring. Do read it if you haven’t yet,” he begged. I called Waterstone’s next day. The book has been out of print in Britain since 1995. No other Tabucchi titles are currently available. How did we become so culturally insular? Why, unlike every other country in Europe, do we turn our backs on books by foreign writers? The statistics are shaming: in France a quarter of all books published are translations; in Britain the figure is only 3 per cent and this includes technical, medical and scientific publications. Do we seriously think that a figure like that is a fair reflection of what is being written in Europe today, or in China, say, a country in ferment; in South America, the continent of Borges and Neruda; in Israel or Iraq? And do we care?
We should do. On the award night, I sat with a hundred or so others, to hear the simple, eloquent, and moving speech of acceptance made by Kadare in the National Museum of Scotland. He spoke of how freedom and literature belong together and how, as a youth, during the years of suppression under Enver Hoxha, he was sustained and inspired by literature. Looming over his village was a sinister castle, used by successive regimes to house political prisoners. But he dreamt of another one Macbeth’s castle in Scotland, made real for him when he read Shakespeare’s play at the age of 11, and copied it into his notebook. “My fascination with that distant northern castle was enough to make my local fortress fade into insignificance . . .” he said. “That teenager was already a citizen of another realm, the realm of literature. He had entrusted to it his imagination and also his moral conscience. Its laws came to override all other law. Its leaders Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Kafka, became his true masters.”
And so the life of a suppressed writer in Albania was enriched by the literature of other lands. Meanwhile, ours limps along on a bland diet of Danielle Steel and celebrity cookery books. We are in thrall to the bestseller. Our literary ambitions are limited to riding the Hogwarts Express or cracking the Da Vinci code. Part of the reason is bleakly commercial the publishing industry today, dominated by multinationals, favours hot properties at the expense of everything else. The booksellers are complicit in the pile ’em high, sell ’em quick mentality. Only rarely does a foreign writer have the credentials to penetrate this well- cushioned sanctuary.
There is, however, another, more worrying explanation, and it has to do with what one publisher described to me as “the rigid incuriosity of the English reader”. Despite globalisation, we have become more rather than less parochial when it comes to literature. Because we assume that English is now universally spoken and understood, we have ceased to believe that anything written in any other language is either interesting or important. Writers have lost touch with the literary cross-references that were the lifeblood of a previous generation. And yet, as Alberto Manguel, next to whom I was sitting, put it: “The same laxity, 50 or 60 years ago, would have meant, for the English reader, no Kafka, no Camus, no Calvino, no Borges.” We need the literature of other countries to expand our horizons and stimulate our ideas. Without it, we are not only diminished, we are starved. Kadare told us that during the worst of times, his nourishment came from great writing. “We believed in literature,” he said. “In return for our belief and our fidelity, literature granted us her blessing and protection.” It seems we are more deprived than he was. |
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Ismail Kadare wins Man Booker International Prize
Press Trust of India
London, June 3, 2005
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Noted Albanian poet and novelist, Ismail Kadare has won the first-ever Man Booker International Prize, thus gaining recognition as one of the world's finest writers.
The 69-year-old Kadare was chosen for the inaugural award for his body of work which includes novels like Broken April, Spring Frost and The General of the Dead Army.
"Ismail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture - its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters," critic John Carey, who led a three-member panel of judges, said.
"He is a universal writer in a tradition of story-telling that goes back to Homer," he added.
Kadare will receive a prize of 60,000 pounds plus a trophy in a ceremony at Edinburgh on June 27, with an extra 15,000 pounds for a translator of his choice. According to a statement, Kadare, who fled to France in 1990 as a refugee before the collapse of dictator Enver Hoxha's Communist regime, said: "I feel deeply honoured." "I am a writer from the Balkan fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness - armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on," he said. Eighteen other authors were shortlisted for the honour, including the late Saul Bellow, Germany's Gunter Grass, Czech- born Milan Kundera, Egypt's Naguib Mahfouz, US writers Philip Roth and John Updike, and Canada's Margaret Atwood. |
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Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare wins first-ever Man Booker International prize
LONDON (AP) - Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare won the first-ever international version of Britain's prestigious Man Booker literary prize Friday. Kadare fled his homeland and won political asylum in France in 1990. "Ismail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture - its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters,'' said John Carey, chairman of the judging committee. "He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer.'' The Man Booker International Prize, the creation of which was announced last year, is open to authors of all nationalities whose work has been either written or translated widely into English. The 60,000 pound (US,000, euro89,000) prize will be awarded for a body of work every two years. The existing annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction is awarded for a single work, and is open only to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth of former British colonies. - AP
Albania's Ismail Kadare Wins First Man Booker International
June 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Albanian author Ismail Kadare won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, worth 60,000 pounds (,000), beating off competition from such renowned fiction writers as Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood and Gunther Grass. Informed of the news after the winner was announced last night, Kadare said, ``I am a writer from the Balkan Fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness -- armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on. ``My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realize that this region, to which my country, Albania, belongs, can also give rise to other kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement, in the field of the arts, literature and civilization,'' he said. Born in 1936 in the mountain town of Gjirokaster, near the Greek border, he witnessed Albania's occupation by fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, while still a child. He studied at the University of Tirana and later at Moscow's Gorky Institute of World Literature, first breaking into print in the 1950s as a poet. Collections with titles such as ``Youthful Inspiration'' (1954) and ``Dreams'' (1957) captured the nation's mood under the Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Kadare's first novel, ``The General of the Dead Army'' was published in 1963. A portrait of postwar Albania, it remains one of his best known works abroad.
Banned Books
Turning increasingly to prose, he deployed allegories to attack the totalitarian regime, yet despite their subtlety, six of his books were banned in Albania. Among them was ``The Palace of Dreams'' (1981), which is set in the Ottoman Empire and focuses on a character whose job it is to spy on people's nocturnal imaginings. In both its subject matter and its magic- realist style, it epitomizes Kadare's darkly glimmering work. His work was translated into French after an editor at Editions Fayard traveled to Albania to smuggle it out in 1986. Since then, his novels, short stories and verse have been published in more than 40 countries. At the end of October 1990, just two months before the Hoxha regime collapsed, Kadare applied for asylum in France, where has lived ever since, receiving a clutch of prizes and honors including membership of the Academie Francaise. ``Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible,'' he has said. ``The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.''
`Universal Writer'
Kadare triumphed over a highly inclusive shortlist that read like a who's who of contemporary literature. The chairman of the jury, Professor John Carey, said, ``Ismail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture -- its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer.'' The other jury members were the writer, novelist and editor Alberto Manguel and the writer and academic Azar Nafisi. A sibling of the U.K.'s long-established Man Booker Prize, this new award will be presented every two years in acknowledgement of a writer's contribution to world literature. It is open to fiction writers of any nationality, as long as their work is available in English. Under the rules of a recently announced separate prize for translation, Kadare can now choose a translator or translator of his work into English to receive a prize of 15,000 pounds. The author will get his prize and a trophy at a dinner to be held in Edinburgh at the end of the month. |
By Beth Gardiner
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:13 a.m. June 3, 2005
LONDON/Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare won the first international version of Britain's prestigious Man Booker literary prize on Friday.
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Kadare, 69, fled his homeland and received political asylum in France in 1990, a few months before Albania's communist regime ended. Before that, his French publisher, Editions Fayard, smuggled his work out of Albania, the prize committee said. |
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"Ismail Kadare is a writer ho maps a whole culture its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters," said John Carey, chairman of the judging committee. "He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer." Kadare said he hoped the prize, given for his body of work, would give the world a different perspective on the tiny Balkan country and its neighbors. "I am a writer from the Balkan fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness – armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on," he said. "My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realize that this region ... can also give rise to other kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement, in the field of the arts, literature and civilization," he said. Kadare, who writes both poetry and prose, became famous in his homeland with the 1963 publication of his first novel, "The General of the Dead Army." His other works include "The Concert," and "The Palace of Dreams." The Man Booker International Prize, the creation of which was announced last year, is open to authors of all nationalities whose work has been either written or translated widely into English. The ,000 prize will be awarded for a body of work every two years. The existing annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction is awarded for a single work, and is open only to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth of former British colonies. Kadare said he hoped the prize, given for his body of work, would give the world a different perspective on the tiny Balkan country and its neighbors. "I am a writer from the Balkan fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness – armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on," he said. Among the 18 finalists for the international prize announced in February were Nobel laureates Saul Bellow, Gunter Grass, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Kenzaburo Oe. Other finalists included Philip Roth, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Milan Kundera and Doris Lessing.
LONDON, England (UPI) -- Albanian writer Ismail Kadare Thursday became the first winner of the Man Booker International Prize, beating out such authors as Ian McEwan for the title. "Ismail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture -- its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters," John Carey, chair of the judges for the prize, said in a statement posted on the award`s Web site. Kadare said he was "honored" by the prize, adding he hoped the world recognized his part of the world was capable of more than violence. "My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realize that this region, to which my country, Albania, belongs, can also give rise to other kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement," he said. Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokaster, Albania. He has lived in France since 1990 after seeking asylum there. His prize is ,000 and a trophy to be awarded June 27 in Edinburgh. He is best known for his books "The General of the Dead Army," and "Broken April."
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Ismail Kadaré (1936- ) |
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Albanian writer, frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, a leading figure of Albanian cultural life from the 1960s. During the terror of the Hoxha regime, Kadare attacked on totalitarianism and the doctrines of socialist realism with subtle allegories, although as a committed Marxist he officially supported the liberation of Albania from its backward past. Since 1990 Kadare has lived in France. Among Kadare's best-known works is The General of the Dead Army (1963). In the story an Italian general is immersed in his absurd and gruesome mission in Albania. He never realizes that he is as dead as the fallen soldiers of past wars.
"The bodies of tens of thousands of soldiers buried beneath the earth had been waiting so many long years for his arrival, and now he was here at last, like a new Messiah, copiously provided with maps, with lists, with the infallible directions that would enable him to draw them up of the mud and restore them to their families. Other generals had led those interminable columns of soldiers into defeat and destruction. But he, he had come to wrest back from oblivion and death the few that remained. He was going to speed on from graveyard to graveyard, searching every field of battle in this country to recover those who had vanished. And in his campaign against the mud he would suffer no reverses; because at his back he had the magic power conferred by statistical exactitude." (from The General of the Dead Army)
Ismail Kadare was born in the museum-city of Gjirokastra, in southern Albania. His father worked in the civil service. Kadare grew up during the years of World War II, witnessing the occupation of his home country by fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. He attended primary and secondary schools in Gjirokastra, and went on to study languages and literature at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana. In 1956 Kadare received a teacher's diploma. He also studied at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow. In 1961 Albania broke with the Soviet Union, and finally with all other countries, including China. From the cultural standstill arose a new generation of writers, among them Kadare, Fatos Arapi, and Dritero Agolli, who was for many years head of the Albanian Union of Writers, although his work was occasionally felt to be out of touch with the party line. In Albania Kadare first won fame as a poet. Writers hostile to Hoxha suffered persecution. Kadare's attitude to the Hoxha regime was ambiguous. His first novel, Gjenerali i ushtrise se vdekur (1963, The General of the Dead Army), is a study of postwar Albania and begins in a pouring rain. The general of the title is on a mission to Albania, years after the occupation and war, to dig up and repatriate the bones of his fellow soldiers, who had died in the country during World War II. "I have a whole army of dead men under my command," he realizes bitterly. Before completing his work, the general suffers a nervous breakdown in a wedding feast. Dasma (1968, The Wedding) was well received in Albania. The heroine of the novel, a young peasant girl, is rescued from a traditional arranged marriage by factory work. She meets and marries a man she loves, thus breaking the traditions. Kadare served as a delegate to the People's Assembly in 1970 and he was given freedom to travel and to publish abroad. Kadare's Chronicle in Stone (1971) was praised by John Updike in The New Yorker as "sophisticated and accomplished in its poetic prose and narrative deftness". In Keshtjella (1970, The Castle), a story of Albania's struggle against the Ottoman Turks, and Ura me tri harqe (1978, The Three-Arched The Bridge), an account of the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a river, Kadare depicted the feudal Albania. After offending the authorities with a politically satirical poem in 1975, he was forbidden to publish for three years. In Broken April (1978), a story about the blood feud, Kadare returned to one of his favorite themes - how the past affects the present. "Gjorg came out of the concealment and walked towards the body. The road was deserted. The only sound was the sound of his own footsteps. The dead man had fallen in a heap. Gjorg bent down and laid his hand on the man's shoulder, as if to wake him. 'What am I doing?' he said to himself. He gripped the dead man's shoulder again, as if he wanted to bring him back to life. 'Why am I doing this?' he thought." Nenpunesi i pallatit te endrrave (1981, The Palace of Dreams) was a political allegory of totalitarianism, set in an Ottoman capital. The central character is a young man, Mark-Alem, whose job is to select, sort, and interpret the dreams of the imperial populace in order to discover the "master-dream" that will predict the overthrow of the rulers. The basically humorous novel for others than the Albanian authorities was almost immediately banned after its publication. In 1982 Kadare was accused by the president of the League of Albanian Writers and Artists of deliberately evading politics by cloaking much of his fiction in history and folklore. Hoxha died in 1985, and his successor, Ramiz Ali, was a less powerful figure. A few months before the collapse of the communist regime, Kadare emigrated to Paris where he has lived with his family ever since. Koncert ne fund te dimrit (1988, The Concert) was considered the best novel of the year 1991 by the French literary magazine Lire. The story is laid against Albania's break with China. In exile Kadare has expressed his disappointment and bitterness. La Pyramide (1992), written in French, was set in Egypt in the twenty-sixth century B.C. and after. In the novel Kadare mocked Hoxha's fondness for elaborate statutes, the pyramid form also reflecting any dictators love for hierarchy. In 2005 Kadare was awarded the Man Booker International Prize.
For further reading: Ismail Kadare, le rhapsode albanais by Anne-Marie Mitchel (1990); Eric Faye: Ismail Kadare by Eric Faye (1991); Contemporary Albanian Literature by A. Pipa (1991); Ismail Kadare by Fabienne Terpan (1992); Uviversi letrar i Kadarese by T. Caushi (1993); Ekskursion ne dy vepra te Kadarese by I. Zamputi (1993); Nje fund dhe nje fillim by R. Elsie (1995); World Authors 1985-1990, ed. by Vineta Colby (1995); Studies in Modern Albanian Literature and Culture by R. Elsie (1996); Pengu i moskuptimit by S. Sinani (1997); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999) - For further information: Ismail Kadare - The Three Acts of Kosove Tragedy by Ismail Kadare - Note: Kadare's birthdate is in some sources Jan. 28, 1936 or Jan. 26, 1936. In this calendar: Jan. 27, 1936.
Selected works:
- Frymezimet djaloshare, 1954
- Enderrimet, 1957
- Shekulli im, 1961
- Gjenerali i ushtrise se vdekur, 1963 - The General of the Dead Army (trans. by Derek Coltman)
- Perse mendohen keto male, 1964
- Vjersha dhe poema te zgjedhura, 1966
- Qyteti i jugut, 1967
- Dasma, 1968 - The Wedding
- Motive me diell, 1968
- Kështjella, 1970 - The Castle
- Autobiografi e popullit ne vargje dhe shenime te tjera, 1971
- Kronike ne gur, Tirana, 1971 - Chronicle in Stone
- Dimri i vetmise se madhe, 1973
- Linja te largeta, shenime udhetimi, 1973
- Nentori i nje kryeqyteti, Tirana, 1975
- Poezia shqipe 28, 1976
- Koha, vjersha dhe poema, 1976
- Emblema e dikurshme, tregime e novela, 1977
- Dimri i madh, 1977
- - The Great Winter
- Ura me tri harqe, 1978
- - The Three-Arched The Bridge (trans. by John Hodgson)
- Prilli i thyer, 1978 (published in Gjakftohtesia, 1980) - Broken April
- On the Lay of the Knights, 1979
- Poezi, 1979
- Buzeqeshje mbi bote, 1980
- Gjakfohtesia, 1980
- Autobiografia e popullit ne vargje, 1980 - The Autobiography of the People in Vers
- Kush e solli Doruntinen, 1980 - Doruntine (trans. by Jon Rothschild)
- Nje dosje per Homerin, 1980
- Sjellesi i fatkeqesise, 1980
- Viti i mbrapshte, 1980
- Krushqit jane te ngrire, 1980
- Vepra letrare, 1981-89 (12 vols.)
- Nenpunesi i pallatit te endrrave, 1981 - The Palace of Dreams (trans.by Barbara Bray)
- Koha e shkrimeve: tregime, novela, pershkrime, 1986
- Koncert ne fund te dimrit, 1988
- - The Concert
- Eskili, ky humbes i madh, 1990
- Dosja H: roman, 1990 - The file on H. (translated from the French of Jusuf Vrioni by David Bellos)
- Ftese ne studio, 1990
- Migjeni ose uragani i nderprere, 1990
- Ardhja e Migjenit ne letersine shqipe, 1991
- Enderr mashtruese, tregime e novela, 1991
- Printemps albanais, 1991
- Nga nje dhjetor ne tjetrin, 1991 - Albanian Spring
- Perbindeshi, 1991
- Invitation a l'atelier de l'ecrivain suivi de Le Poids de la Croix Paris, 1991
- Pesha e kryqit, 1991
- Nata me hene, 1992
- La Pyramide, 1992 - The Pyramid
- Oeuvres, 1993-94
- Vepra, 1993-94
- Noël, une anthologie des plus beaux textes de la littérature mondiale, 1994
- L'ombre, 1994
- Albanie, 1995
- La legende des legendes, 1995
- Visage des Balkans, 1995
- Dialog me Alain Bosquet, 1996
- Shkaba, 1996
- Spiritus, roman me kaos, zbulese dhe cmers, 1996
- Kasnecet e shiut, 1997
- Kushriri i engjrjve, 1997
- Pormes, 1957-1997, 1997
- Kombi shqiptar nr prag tr mijrvjecarit te trete, 1998
- Tri kenge zie per Kosoven, 1998 - Elegy for Kosovo (trans. by Peter Constantine)
- Ikja e shtergut, 1999
- Qorrfermani, 1999
- Vjedhja e gjumit mbreteror: tregime, 1999
- Ra ky mort e u pame: ditar per Kosoven, artikuj, letra, 1999
- Breznite e Hankonateve, 2000
- Lulet e ftohta te marsit, 2000 - Froides fleurs d'avril (trans. by Jusuf Vrioni) - Spring Flowers, Spring Frost
- Princesha Argjiro, 2001
- Unaza ne kthetra: sprova letrare, shkrime te ndryshme, intervista, 2001
- Shqiptaret ne kerkim te nje fati te ri: sprove, 2001
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Ismail Kadare Takes 1st International Man Booker Prize
by Caryn Thurman (firecracker) Jun 2, 2005 7:16 PM
Earlier today Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare was awarded the first Man Booker International Prize. In a year when translated literature is starting to get the attention it's due, it's great to see Kadare chosen over more notable characters, such as Margaret Atwood or John Updike. On being named the winner of this inaugural prize, Kadare offered the following statement: "I am a writer from the Balkan Fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness - armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on. My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realise that this region, to which my country, Albania, belongs, can also give rise to other kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement, in the field of the arts, literature and civilisation." You can find a sample of Ismail Kadare's poetry online here or read more literature from the Balkans in the January 2004 issue of Words Without Borders.
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Ismail Kadare to receive Man Booker International Prize June 27 |
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posted by Blake on Saturday June 18, @02:09AM -132 hits
from the And-The-Winner-Is dept. |
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Albanian beats literary titans to first international Booker prize
Jon Henley in Paris and Kirsty Scott
Friday June 3, 2005
The Guardian
Kadare has been a leading figure in Albanian cultural life for more than four decades. Photo: AFP/Getty
Roth, Grass, Updike, Lessing, McEwan, Spark, Garcia Marquez. It read like a rollcall of modern literature's titans and anyone scanning the shortlist for the inaugural Man Booker International prize could have been forgiven for missing the giant of Albanian letters nestling among them. But yesterday Ismail Kadare, a political exile whose work had to be smuggled out of Stalinist Albania in the 1980s, was being compared to Homer as he beat his better-known peers to the prestigious £60,000 prize.
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