Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, 88, author of a monumental work under the communist tyranny of Enver Hoxha, died Monday morning, his publisher and the hospital announced to AFP.
Mr. Kadaré died of a heart attack, the Tirana hospital said. He arrived there “without signs of life”, the doctors gave him a cardiac massage, but he “died around 6:40 a.m. GMT” (8:40 a.m. local), the hospital said.
A sarcastic ethnographer and novelist alternating between the grotesque and the epic, Ismaïl Kadaré explored the myths and history of his country to dissect the mechanisms of a universal evil, totalitarianism.
Albania lived for decades under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, one of the most closed in the world.
“Communist hell, like any other hell, is suffocating,” the writer told AFP in one of his last interviews, in October. “But in literature, it transforms into a life force, a force that helps you survive, to defeat dictatorship head on.”
Literature “gave me everything I have today, it was the meaning of my life, it gave me the courage to resist, happiness, the hope of overcoming everything,” he said. explained, already weakened, from his home in Tirana, the Albanian capital.
published on July 1 at 09:52, AFP
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