ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to aspects of Albanian history and culture, material which is little known outside the country, and which is important to understanding Ismail Kadare's writing. Literary analyses are made of a range of Kadare's works written under the socialist regime, in order to demonstrate the depth, complexity, and value of the individual works for an international audience. Kadare's writing over the forty-five years of the dictatorship was extraordinarily coherent in terms of its themes and its focus on aspects of Albanian life. Moreover, Kadare has retained the artistic right to revise and change his texts, refusing to allow them to be determined by the category of the political alone. Kadare's novels bring the battle between the writer and the dictator, of freedom and oppression, to readers beyond the borders of Albania and Eastern Europe and across the decades which separate us from the era of Eastern European socialism.
