Summary
THERE was a standing ovation on Monday night when Ismail Kadare, the Albanian novelist and poet, walked on stage to receive his [pounds]60,000 cheque as the first recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. Before a frocked, kilted and bow-tied audience, most of whom until recently knew only his name, if that, Kadare delivered a moving speech in which he described his religious fervour for literature and what it meant not only to him but to a nation "that had almost been buried alive" beneath a brutal communist regime.
What was also chillingly apparent was the vastness of the gulf that lies between his experience of the world and that of his audience. As Professor John Carey, chair of the panel of judges (which included Argentinian-born writer Alberto Manguel and Iranian writer and academic Azar Nafisi) remarked, it had become clear to them as they selected their candidates how many of the writers in translation on their shortlist had lived through some of the most cataclysmic or disturbing events of the twentieth century.See the full content of this document
Extract
Is That Freedom I See Before Me, or Just the Rain?First Word
By comparison, their English language counterparts came from a much more sheltered world. Thus the works of Milan Kundera, Gunter Grass, Naguib Mahfouz, A B Yehoshua and, of course, Kadare, are...
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