Ismail Kadare in London

by John Hodgson

Ismail Kadare, who died in July last year, gave Albanian literature a global reach, not only in the sense that his novels came to be read worldwide, but that in their historical and geopolitical sweep they tackled world events. At a time when ordinary Albanians could not travel, he set his novels in Russia, China, even New York, among airports and embassies. He enabled the Albanian reader to travel at least in imagination. 

I kept Ismail Kadare company on what I believe was his only visit to England, in about 2010. The Accident had just appeared in English, and the publisher invited him from Paris for a series of launches, meetings with readers, and events at literary festivals. I had met Ismail several times in Tirana, where he had given me hospitality. Together with Dan Franklin, editor at Canongate, I went to St Pancras, where he arrived on Eurostar, rubbing his eyes in the bright lights of the station as if he had himself tunnelled like a mole under the Channel. He seemed confused by the crowds and noise of London. 

I had borne in mind that England does not feature much in Kadare’s work, except in connection with Shakespeare, and I wanted to show him something of our city, and especially the reconstructed Globe Theatre on Bankside. But the publisher had prepared an intense and indeed exhausting programme. 

A hotel had been booked in Soho. Ismail asked me why Soho had a bad reputation, but I replied that it was a neighbourhood of culture and pleasure that for centuries had welcomed immigrants, writers, alcoholic painters, lovers of French and Italian cooking, and nonconformists of all kinds.  The hotel was small, but luxurious, and Dan pointed out famous actors and pop stars who were also staying there. Alas their names were unknown to Mr. Kadare, and to me.

Ismail was distressed to find that I was not being paid for this week of literary activities, but had been asked to set aside whatever I was doing to accompany him. This struck him as unreasonable, and he promptly invited me to lunch in the hotel restaurant. I said to him that there were a lot of smart hotels and restaurants in The Accident, and Ismail was pleased that I had noticed this, because he had put them in on purpose. Albanian literature needed a touch of luxury, and shouldn’t be just about mud - maybe a subtle dig at Dritëro Agolli, Ismail’s neighbour on the floor above in Tirana, who famously prided himself at having “brought the mud of Devoll into the Writers’ League”.

Over lunch he told me many stories of his far-flung travels in long-vanished epochs, to Moscow during Khrushchev’s “Thaw”, where he found the atmosphere so refreshing and more liberal than in Tirana, to China during the Cultural Revolution, to Vietnam where he experienced the American bombardment of Hanoi, and even to the United Nations in New York, where he met Albert Lord, the student of Balkan oral tradition and author of The Singer of Tales, whose work partly forms the basis for Kadare’s The File on H.

Unfortunately Soho did not in the end make a good impression. Ismail was used to writing for an hour and a half each day at a table in the Café Rostand in Paris. ‘Where can I write?’ He asked, looking disdainfully at a Costa. A quiet café without piped music proved impossible to find. 

Book launches are possibly a special pleasure to young writers at the outset of their careers, and there are many writers who blossom in front of an audience.  Ismail Kadare was not one of these. Writers with a large reputation can tire of sitting in bookshops facing an endless line of readers asking for autographs, if possible with a personal dedication. The great Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing refused to do this.

I saw that Ismail too was a reluctant performer. We had events at Foyles, in the Free Word Centre of PEN International, at Bloomberg’s, the finance house which runs a lavish cultural programme for its staff, and at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. The quality of discussion at some of these events was very low. There were questions about the politics of the day, about the prospects for Albanian unification, and about the literary prizes that Ismail had won and not won. Very few questions showed any deep acquaintance with his novels. While waiting for my interpretation, Ismail would turn towards me with a weary and bored expression. I was also unused to interpreting in front of an audience, and felt caught in an awkward position. I don’t think either of us shone at these events. As the week wore on, I realised that my task was less to introduce Ismail Kadare to the public than protect him from it. 

I felt sorry that Ismail had been put under such pressure to perform in public. Writing is a solitary business, and authors communicate with many thousands of readers from the silence of their desks. I wish Ismail could have been left in peace to do just that.

A Dictator Calls, Ismail Kadare's final book, is translated by John Hodgson. It is published by Vintage and costs £9.99.