Skip to main content

Balkan Beauty, Balkan Blood

Ismail Kadare apart, few Albanian authors have been published in English. This month, however, Northwestern University Press will be publishing a new anthology of Albanian short stories entitled Balkan Beauty, Balkan Blood: Modern Albanian Short Stories. The book is edited by Dr Robert Elsie, a Canadian with an interest in Albania, whose Albanian literature website has been, until now, the only place to find a range of Albanian authors in translation.

Comments

ITS said…
I had a dream last night about Albania being as powerful as Israel militarily speaking.

I had visions of bombarding, Serbia, Macedonia, and the greater parts of Greece, including Athens airport and acropolis... I got so carried away in my dream, that I was a bit dissapointed when I woke up...

... one can only envy Israel's might...
6:28 pm
olli said…
I think you definitely need that holiday.
7:30 pm
Anonymous said…
He needs a doctor!
5:53 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
34 comments
Read more

Kamëz Part 3

For those who want a lengthy detailed report into the election there will, undoubtedly, be a range of them to chose from. In the meantime, here are my brief reflections on the last few weeks. At the heart of the problems around this election is the unwarranted influence of political parties on all aspects of the electoral process. Every institution responsible for organising and facilitating the election is under the control of political parties. The Electoral Code itself was heavily revised only days before the original date for the elections and only weeks before the actual date (Law 9676 13 January 2007). It was these revisions, specifically Article 181/2, that created the overly complicated identification requirements that caused so much confusion, and undoubtedly disenfranchised some voters. Let's be clear though: these revisions were not designed to protect the interests of the electorate. They were drafted primarily because the political parties do not trust each other. The ...
27 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more