Sejfullah MALËSHOVA
Biography Poetry Sejfullah MALËSHOVA The forced marriage between Albanian literature and Marxism-Leninism was firmly cemented from the start with the founding in October 1945 of the Albanian Writers’ Union. Initially, responsibility for cultural policies in post-war Albania was conferred upon the poet Sejfulla Malëshova (1901-1971), who used the penname Lame Kodra. Originally from […]
Mitrush KUTELI
Biography Poetry Prose Mitrush KUTELI Mitrush Kuteli (1907-1967), pseudonym of Dhimitër Pasko, known in Romanian as Dimitrie Pascu, was born in Pogradec on the banks of Lake Ohrid on 13 September 1907 and attended a foreign-language school in Greece (a Romanian commercial college in Thessalonika) and later moved to Bucharest, where he studied economics and […]
Faik Bey KONITZA
Biography Prose Faik Bey KONITZA Faik bey Konitza (1875-1942), also spelt Faik Konica, was perhaps the most influential of all Albanian writers and publishers of the turn of the twentieth century. He was born in April 1875 in the now Greek village of Konitza in the Pindus mountains, not far from the present […]
Ernest KOLIQI
Biography Prose Ernest KOLIQI Of all the prose writers of the period, none was more imposing and influential than Ernest Koliqi (1903-1975). Koliqi was born in Shkodra on 20 May 1903 and was educated at the Jesuit college of Arice in the Lombardian town of Brescia, where he became acquainted with Italian literature […]
Naim FRASHËRI
Biography Poetry Naim FRASHËRI Naim Frashëri (1846-1900) is nowadays widely considered to be the national poet of Albania. He spent his childhood in the village of Frashër where he no doubt began learning Turkish, Persian and Arabic and where, at the Bektashi monastery, he was imbued with the spiritual traditions of the Orient. […]
Gjergj FISHTA
Biography Poetry Gjergj FISHTA By far the greatest and most influential figure of Albanian literature in the first half of the twentieth century was the Franciscan pater Gjergj Fishta (1871-1940) who more than any other writer gave artistic expression to the searching soul of the now sovereign Albanian nation. Lauded and celebrated up […]
Andon Zako ÇAJUPI
Biography Poetry Drama Andon Zako ÇAJUPI Andon Zako Çajupi (1866-1930) was born in Sheper, a village in the Upper Zagoria region of southern Albania, as the son of a rich tobacco merchant, Harito Çako, who did business in Kavala and Egypt. The young Andon Zako, who usually preferred this spelling of his surname […]
ASDRENI
Biography Poetry ASDRENI Asdreni (1872-1947), pseudonym of Aleks Stavre Drenova, was born in the village of Drenova, about five kilometers from Korça in southeastern Albania. He attended a Greek-language elementary school in his native village and had just begun high school in Korça when his widowed father died, leaving the thirteen-year-old Aleks an orphan. […]
Muçi ZADE
Biography Poetry Muçi ZADE Muçi Zade is the author of the earliest known Albanian poem written in Arabic script and in the Muslim tradition. The work is taken from a manuscript discovered in Korça and is dated 1724. In this octosyllabic poem, with an AAAB rhyme in the Albanian original, the author laments not having […]
Giulio VARIBOBA
Biography Poetry Prose Giulio VARIBOBA Giulio Variboba (1724-1788), known in Albanian as Jul Variboba, is the first Arbëresh poet of real talent and is regarded by many Albanians as the first genuine poet in all of Albanian literature. Variboba was born in San Giorgio Albanese (Alb. Mbuzati) in the province of Cosenza to a family […]