ABSTRACT
In communist Albania in the early seventies a controversial novel appeared from the hand of leading writer, Ismail Kadare. The dictator, Enver Hoxha appeared in an idealized role in the context of the break with Khrushchev’s post-Stalinist Soviet Union in 1961. However this was no mere panegyric. Kadare’s idealized image of Hoxha was motivated by the intention of educating the dictator, to remind him of the figure he had once (almost) been. In this paper I explain the logic behind Kadare’s risky attempt to instruct the dictator by means of the manipulation of his public image. Kadare carried out a strategy of literary mirroring of the persona of the leader back onto himself in a way that was unparalleled in the European socialist environment, where literary portraits of leaders were routinely modelled on Stalinist eulogy. The paper thus engages with aspects of the mobilization of political symbolism, and specifically with the attempt of a leading writer in the late Stalinist environment of Albania to influence the communist leadership through manipulation of the literary image.
