Ismail Kadare Dies at 88; Novels Brought Albania’s Plight to the World

Obituaries|Ismail Kadare, Whose Novels Brought Albania’s Plight to the World, Dies astatine 88

Ismail Kadare, the Albanian novelist and writer who single-handedly wrote his isolated Balkan homeland onto the representation of satellite literature, creating often dark, allegorical works that obliquely criticized the country’s totalitarian state, died successful Tirana, Albania, connected Monday. He was 88.

His decease was confirmed by Bujar Hudhri, the caput of the Onufri Publishing House, his exertion and steadfast successful Albania, who said that helium went into cardiac apprehension astatine his location and died astatine a infirmary successful Tirana, the Albanian capital.

In a literate vocation that spanned fractional a century, Mr. Kadare (pronounced kah-dah-RAY) wrote scores of books, including novels and collections of poems, abbreviated stories and essays. He changeable to planetary fame successful 1970 erstwhile his archetypal novel, “The General of the Dead Army,” was translated into French. European critics hailed it arsenic a masterpiece.

Mr. Kadare’s sanction was floated respective times for the Nobel Prize, but the grant eluded him. In 2005, helium received the inaugural Man Booker International Prize (now the International Booker Prize), awarded to a surviving writer of immoderate nationality for wide accomplishment successful fiction. The finalists included specified literate titans arsenic Gabriel García Márquez and Philip Roth.

In awarding the prize, John Carey, a British professional and the panel’s chairman, called Mr. Kadare “a cosmopolitan writer successful a contented of storytelling that goes backmost to Homer.”

Critics often compared Mr. Kadare to Kafka, Kundera and Orwell, among others. During the archetypal 3 decades of his career, helium lived and wrote successful Albania, astatine the clip nether the grip of 1 of the eastbound bloc’s astir brutal and idiosyncratic dictators, Enver Hoxha.