One figure from northern Albania who played a key role in the Rilindja culture of the nineteenth century was Pashko Vasa (1825-1892), also known as Wassa Effendi, Vaso Pasha, or Vaso Pasha Shkodrani. This statesman, poet, novelist and patriot was born in Shkodra. From 1842 to 1847 he worked as

Sterjo Spasse (1914-1989) is a novelist and short story writer of (Slav) Macedonian origin from Lake Prespa. It was while teaching in the little village of Derviçan south of Gjirokastra that the eighteen-year-old Spasse began writing his first novel, and his masterpiece, Nga jeta në jetë – Pse!?, Korça 1935

Filip Shiroka (1859-1935) is a classical Rilindja poet whose verse was first to become known in later years. He was born and raised in Shkodra and educated there by the Franciscans. Among his teachers was poet Leonardo De Martino (1830-1923), whose influence is omnipresent in Shiroka’s verse. His earliest verse

Lasgush Poradeci (1899-1987) had lived the final years of his life in his beloved town of Pogradec on Lake Ohrid, not far from the Macedonian border, tending his garden and studying the ever-changing moods of the lake. The rhythmic and gentle lapping of the waves had always been among the

Fan Noli (1882-1965), also known as Theophan Stylian Noli, was not only an outstanding leader of the Albanian-American community, but also a pre-eminent and multi-talented figure of Albanian literature, culture, religious life and politics. Noli was born in the village of Ibrik Tepe, south of Edirne (Adrianopole) in European Turkey

Classical poet Ndre Mjeda (1866-1937) bridges the gap between late nineteenth-century Rilindja culture and the dynamic literary creativity of the independence period. Mjeda was born on 20 November 1866 in Shkodra and, like so many other Gheg writers of the period, was educated by the Jesuits . Influential in his upbringing

With Migjeni (1911-1938), contemporary Albanian poetry begins its course. Migjeni, pen name of Millosh Gjergj Nikolla, was born in Shkodra. His father, Gjergj Nikolla (1872-1924), came from an Orthodox family of Dibran origin and owned a bar there. As a boy, he attended a Serbian Orthodox elementary school in Shkodra

The writer widely considered to be the father of modern Albanian poetry in Yugoslavia, Esad Mekuli (1916-1993), was not born in Kosova itself but in the mountain village of Plava on the Montenegrin-Albanian border where national traditions are still revered. Mekuli went to school in Peja on the Kosova side

The forced marriage between Albanian literature and Marxism-Leninism was firmly cemented from the start with the founding in October 1945 of the Albanian Writers’ Union. Initially, responsibility for cultural policies in post-war Albania was conferred upon the poet Sejfulla Malëshova (1901-1971), who used the penname Lame Kodra. Originally from the

Mitrush Kuteli (1907-1967), pseudonym of Dhimitër Pasko, known in Romanian as Dimitrie Pascu, was born in Pogradec on the banks of Lake Ohrid on 13 September 1907 and attended a foreign-language school in Greece (a Romanian commercial college in Thessalonika) and later moved to Bucharest, where he studied economics and