Albanian Life

Life is War: Surviving Dictatorship in Communist Albania features six intimate interviews with women and men who survived Enver Hoxha's communist regime. The book reveals how everyday people survived political persecution and oppression, and champions human resilience in the face of unrelenting political terror.

Sevasti Kyrias-Dako, known in Albanian as Sevasti Qiriazi, was the first Albanian girl to receive a higher education. She grew up in Monastir (Bitola), Macedonia, attended Protestant mission schools in Monastir and Istanbul, then went to Korca, Albania in 1891 to help establish the Albanian Girls' School with her brother Gerasim. She taught the Albanian language in the face of strong opposition. She witnessed Albania's progression from its last years under Ottoman rule, to independence and successive governments, and through world wars and occupations, until the beginning of the communist era. She wrote her memoirs in English but they were never published until 2016. This title is part of the 500/200 Albanian Protestant Commemorative Series. Historical Reviews: "In telling the story of the Kyrias sisters, we are telling the story of the educational movement in Albania, a story of achievement and romance." -HESTER JENKINS, educator and biographer "Never should we deny or forget the great service done by a 'national nest' that became a hub and a fortress where national feelings and sparks both gathered and spread. This "nest" was the Girls' School in Kortcha." -MIHAL GRAMENO, Albanian writer, publisher, and warrior "The school of the Kyrias sisters has elevated us in the eyes of the world as people of progress for the Albanian Idea. It revived the idealism of our Renaissance. Among Albanian mothers, the school awakened feelings for the preservation of our nation, as Carmen Sylvia has expressed so well: 'The woman weaves the future of the nation.'" -ASDRENI, Albanian poet, patriot, and author of the Albanian -national anthem "One of the first apostles of the Albanian language who embraced the holy but extremely dangerous idea of writing the Albanian language within Albania.... When we speak of her bold actions, brave resistance, and unrivaled patriotic service, the name of Miss Sevasti Kyrias is revered as a heroine." -PANDELI EVANGJELI, two-time prime minister of Albania "Pure inspiration, poetry and song. Sevasti's work is a call to the younger generation. It is the symbol of liberty and progress. It is a call to restore Albania's honor to new heights, as every Albanian employs their knowledge and efforts so that Albania may one day be listed among the most developed European nations." -DHIMITER DISHNICA, Albanian scholar, in "Motrat Qiriazi" ("The Kyrias Sisters")

The text includes introductory chapters on Albanian history and customs, as well as several photographic essays that convey a vivid sense of place. The book captures the beauty of the country, the warmth of the people and the rigors of contemporary Albanian life.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Biography Award The Sunday Times Best Book of the Year in Biography and Memoir A Financial Times Best Book of 2021 (Critics' Picks) The New Yorker, Best Books We Read in 2021 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2021 A Guardian Best Book of the Year A reflection on "freedom" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans. For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests. Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking. With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.

Stalinism, that particularly brutal phase of the Communist experience, came to an end in most of Europe with the death of Stalin in 1953. However, in one country - Albania - Stalinism survived virtually unscathed until 1990. The regime that the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha led from 1944 until his death in 1985 was incomparably severe. Such was the reign of terror that no audible voice of opposition or dissent ever arose in the Balkan state and Albania became isolated from the rest of the world and utterly inward-looking. Three decades after his death, the spectre of Hoxha still lingers over the country, yet many people – inside and outside Albania – know little about the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for so many decades. This book provides the first biography of Hoxha available in English. Using unseen documents and first-hand interviews, journalist Blendi Fevziu pieces together the life of a tyrannical ruler in a biography which will be essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan history and communist studies

What makes the Albanians ALBANIAN: A witty guide to the airs and affectations that affirm the Albanian attitude. - See more at: http://www.xenophobes.com/the-Albanians/#sthash.dhnOHBuj.dpuf

'The Area Handbook for Albania' seeks to present an overview of the various social, political, and economic aspects of the country as they appeared in 1970. The leaders of the Communist Party have gone to extremes to maintain an aura of secrecy about their nation and their efforts to govern it. Material on Albania is scanty and some that is available is not reliable but, using their own judgments on sources, the authors have striven for objectivity in this effort to depict Albanian society in 1970.

This collection of papers on contemporary issues in Albanian history and anthropology covers a broad range of approaches and forms of analysis. The book includes research on parts of the country that have rarely made an appearance in international scholarship, including recent research on various aspects of urban life in Albania, with several chapters being set in Shkodra, Tirana, Elbasan, and Gjirokastra. Issues of local self-organization or identity processes are presented as well. A third core aspect that is addressed is the continued analysis of new and revealing demographic sources that shed light on the structure and history of the Albanian family. (Series: Studies on South East Europe - Vol. 9)