Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare is an Albanian writer. He is known for his novels, although he was first noticed for his poetry collections. He has been a leading literary figure in his own country since the 1960s. In the 1960s he focused on short stories until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army. In 1996 he became a lifetime member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of France. In 1992, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; in 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize and in 2009 the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts. He has divided his time... between Albania and France since 1990. Kadare has been a Nobel Prize in Literature candidate several times. He began writing very young, in the mid 1950s. His works have been published in about thirty languages. Ismail Kadare was born on 28 January 1936 in Gjirokastër, Albania in a non-religious family. His father worked in the civil service. He attended primary and secondary schools in Gjirokastër and he studied languages and literature at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana. In 1956 Kadare received a teacher's diploma.
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