ABSTRACT
Albania lay largely outside the sphere of European consciousness from the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century. On the basis of archaeological finds and historical studies, Kadare posits an Illyrian–Albanian culture reaching back to a common Graeco-Illyrian pre-history of the Balkan peninsula before the Slav migrations. During the early period of relative religious tolerance, the Albanian language was suppressed, indicating that language represented a greater threat to unity than religion, which was not generally doctrinaire, dogmatic, or charged with proto-national significance. Kadare's attitudes towards the dictatorship changed, but the focus remained the same: to deny the dictatorship the sole custody of the voice of Albania. Ismail Kadare's exploration of ethnic consciousness goes much deeper than the communist nation-state separatism of Enver Hoxha. In Kadare's national identity, culture is transmitted through language in ways which are linguistically unique and ultimately incapable of translation.
