Ismail Kadare

Born in Albania on 28 January 1936, Kadare started as a poet before his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, brought him international attention. He spent decades writing under Communist Albania's strict censorship, embedding double-entendre, myth, and coded messages in his fiction to slip past the Sigurimi secret police. In 1990 he defected to Paris, escaping the regime that had already banned three of his books. Both major Albanian parties later asked him to serve as consensual President; he declined both times. France made him a foreign associate of the Académie des Sciences Morales e…