Albaniens berømteste nulevende forfatter er Ismail Kadare.
Ismail Kadares bøger er alle oversat til engelsk og er bestemt et nærmere bekendtskab - ja Nobelprisen - værd. Bøgerne er særdeles spændende analyser af Albaniens politiske fortid og nutid samtidigt med, at de giver et spændende indblik i albanernes mentalitet og selvforståelse.
"Darka e gabuar" = "The wrong dinner" er fra 2008:
In writing this book, Kadare was inspired by a true event which shook his birthplace, the town of Gjirokastra in southern Albania, many years ago when he was a child.
The book focuses on an unusual and mysterious dinner. It describes a real event in the fall of 1943 when Gjirokastra was occupied by the Germans. One evening, the German Commander was invited for a dinner by the most well-known surgeon of the south of Albania, Vasil Laboviti, whose house was close to Kadare’s. At that time, the book author was only seven years old. By inviting the German Commander for dinner, Laboviti did something which no one expected: after the German arrival, the anger and fear in Gjirokastra were most wide-spread. What was discussed during this dinner remained a secret in spite of the many questions that were asked even long after the war. In any case, after that dinner, 80 Albanians, who had been imprisoned by the Germans, were set free.
In an interview with Southeast Europe – People and Culture, Kadare said that he was glad that he had finally managed to write about this event which had been on his mind since long. Throughout this time, he added, he was afraid that circumstances could make the writing of this book difficult or even impossible. But this did not happen because “the dinner, or more precisely the reverberation that surrounded it, was such in my memory that it forced me not to leave it aside,” he said. (www.southeast-europe.eu)