Kadare Demands Dictator’s Widow Return Manuscript

In the civil lawsuit filed on July 18 in Tirana’s District Court the writer maintains that the manuscript has been withheld illegally by Nexhmije Hoxha and asks the court to sequester it until a verdict is issued.

Ismail Kadare seeks also to regain the copyright of the novel through the lawsuit.

Kadare was born in 1936 in the southern town of Gjirokastra, near the Greek border. He first studied at the University of Tirana in Albania, and later at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow.

During the half a century of Stalinist rule in Albania his works attacked totalitarianism and the doctrines of Socialist Realism with subtle allegories.

A perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature, his novels and essays have been translated into more than 40 languages.

Shortly before the collapse of the Communist regime in 1990, Kadare claimed political asylum in France, issuing statements in favour of the democratisation of Albania and an end to single-party rule.