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The Country where No One Ever Dies
Victimized by dysfunctional family dynamics while struggling with the harsh realities of Albania's communist regime, a young girl endures everyday violence and the perpetual changing of her own identity, in an English translation of an award-winning first novel. Original.
The Highland Lute
The most powerful and effective epic to have been written in Albanian for which no English translation exists. This is a unique resource for students and scholars of Balkan studies and comparative literature. "The Highland Lute" is the most powerful and influential epic to have been written in Albanian. Enormously popular when it appeared in the 1920s and 30s, it captivated the country with its vivid, archetypal characters and panoramic descriptions: the backdrop to Albania's historical battles for freedom and independence from the Turks and Montenegrins. It propelled its author, Gjergj Fishta, to universal recognition as the national poet of Albania until the Communists took power in 1944. On its first public recital in post-Communist Albania, 45 years later, many in the audience still knew parts by heart. Robert Elsie's masterful new translation, the first to appear in English, captures the spirit of the original and, accompanied by a new critical introduction, will introduce the poem to a new generation of admirers.
Songs of the Frontier Warriors
The Epics of Gilgamesh, Homer, Vergil, Shahnameh, are sources of our knowledge of religious beliefs. This epic is a welcome introduction to the spiritual world of the Albanians as they fought the crusades. The "Songs of the Frontier Warrior is the first English-language translation ever made of Albanian epic verse. As the product of a little-known culture and a difficult, rarely studied language, the Albanian epic has tended to remain in the shadow of the Serbo-Croatian, or more properly, Bosnian epic, with which it has undeniable affinities. This translation may thus be regarded as an initial attempt to rectify the imbalance and to give scholars and the reading public in general an opportunity to delve into the exotic world of the northern Albanian tribes. The present bilingual edition offers a broad selection of the best known songs. Also included are an introduction, a glossaries of terms and sources, and a selective bibliography.
Lightning from the Depths
If a people Have no poets And no poetry of their own For a National Anthology Then treachery and barking Will do the trick With these words, a challenge is laid down in this new volume of Albanian poetry. Albania, however, has a dynamic tradition of literature. Lightning from the Depths is the first English collection to present the full range of Albanian verse. Albanian literature has had many lives. The early Christian traditions disappeared as Islam and the Ottoman Empire took over. Muslim literature, too, withered when the nation strove to become an independent European country. The beginnings of a modern tradition were quashed by the Stalinists. All along this rocky path, poets have turned the political strife, poverty, and isolation their nation has often experienced into culture, both celebrating and questioning the society in which they live. Lightning from the Depths opens readers’ eyes to a new political and cultural world populated artists who can spin despair into poetry.
Historical Dictionary of Albania
Albania is not well known by outsiders; it was deliberately closed to the outside world during the communist era. Now it has thankfully become free again, its borders are open and it can be visited, and it is increasingly integrating with the rest of Europe and beyond. Unfortunately, Albania has had its share of problems in the post-communist era; it's a land of destitution and despair, thanks in part to the Albanian mafia, which has turned the country into one of blood-feuds, kalashnikovs, and eternal crises. Yet, Albania is, in essence, a European nation like any other and will soon, it is to be hoped, advance and take its proper place in Europe and the world. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Albania relates the history of this little-known country through a detailed chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, appendixes, and over 700 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, places, and events; institutions and organizations; and political, economic, social, cultural, and religious facets.
The Loser
An English version of a novel by Fatos Kongoli. Why does Thesar Lumi disembark from the refugee ship to Italy and return to his home town? The question posed at the beginning of this compelling novel is answered as his life story is gradually revealed.
Blood of the Quill
The first English-language publication of the great Kosovan poet.
Thirty Agas Were Conversing
To many people's surprise, the Albanian epic is still alive and kicking. Even in the second decade of the twenty-first century, one can still find a good number of singers, called lahutars in Albanian, who are able to sing and recite the heroic deeds of Muja and Halili and their thirty Agas. These are men, and now a good number of women, who have inherited their repertoires as part of an unbroken oral tradition passed down from generation to generation. One can safely assume that they are the very last native singers of oral epic verse in Europe! In 2011, a major project was initiated to record and document the Albanian epic in the five Balkan countries in which it is still sung: Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The wealth of material collected from 2012-2014 shows that the Albanian epic, although perhaps not what it was in former years, is by no means moribund. About 4,000 lines of verse were translated into English for this volume.
The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory
This book explores the historial role of the Balkan Wars. In Eastern Europe, the two Balkan Wars of 1912/13 had greater importance than the First World War for the construction of nations and states. This volume shows how these “short” wars profoundly changed the sociopolitical situation in the Balkans, with consequences that are still felt today. More than one hundred years later, the successors of the belligerent states in Southeastern Europe memorialize the wars as heroic highlights of their respective pasts. Furthermore, the metaphor that the Balkans were Europe’s “powder keg”, perpetuated at the beginning of the twentieth century in the face of these wars, was reactivated in both the West and the East up through the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The authors entangle the hitherto exclusive national master narratives and analyse them cogently and trenchantly for an international readership. They make an indispensable contribution to the proper integration of the Balkan Wars into the European historical memory of twentieth-century warfare.
