Bibliofemme News
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28/06/2005
World Booker awarded to Albanian author
Dissident Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare was awarded the first-ever Man Booker International Prize for Literature at a ceremony in Edinburgh last night.
The ceremony took place at the National Museum of Scotland following a civic reception and a public debate on international writing awards.
Kadare, 69, won the award over a shortlist that included some of the world's best-known names in fiction - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, G nter Grass, Ian McEwan, Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark.
The chairman of the prize judges, Professor John Carey, described Mr Kadare as a "master storyteller" with "first-hand experience of the 20th century's darker side", who had lived through the kind of political turmoil that few English or American writers had experienced.
Kadare's work had to be smuggled out of the country before he won political asylum in France in 1990.
He has sold 250,000 copies of his books in his native Albania, is well-known in France and is published in 40 countries.
A newly translated novel, The Successor, will be published by Edinburgh-based Canongate next year.
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