It was Ismail Kadare's first novel, The General of the Dead Army – published in Albania in 1963 – that brought him fame, instantly making him one of the few Albanian writers known internationally. Translated into over 45 languages and winner of the most prestigious literary prizes (Man Booker, Prince of Asturias, Jerusalem Prize), Kadare died in Tirana on Monday, July 1, aged 88.

He was born on January 28, 1936, in Gjirokastër, a town located 200 kilometers from Tirana, in the mountainous south of Albania. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site – it was known under the Byzantine Empire as Argyropolis, the "Silver City" – this historic city played an important role in his work. Kadare described it in his 1971 novel Chronicle in Stone and in his magnificent 2015 autobiographical work The Doll. In his life as in his stories, Kadare always returned to Gjirokastër, "the most sloped city in Europe," the only one where you could "hang your hat on the tip of a minaret."

Gjirokastër was also the birthplace of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha (1908-1985). Which was, of course, a chance coincidence, but Kadare felt he was drawn back to it a little too often – to Hoxha, to the dictatorship, to his country's political history. That he was summoned to explain how he had been able to trick or deal with the regime – a form of communism of which he had known just about every version, Russian, Chinese and then completely autonomous. Speaking with Le Monde in 2001, he made no secret of his weariness at always having to fend off the eternal suspicions of ambiguity about him when asked about Albania. "It disgusts me to spend so much energy talking about it. Basically, what people ask me is how did I get out of the system alive? But you could have been shot for the tiniest things, so why should I have sacrificed myself? Those who lecture tell me: 'You weren't sincere with the dictators.' But is it necessary to be sincere with bandits and wild animals?"

His sincerity, he said, was exercised in his art. Indeed, literature was with him from an early age. At the age of 9, as communism took hold in his country, he was already "obsessed by the idea of finding the meaning of words." At 12, he wrote his first verses. After studying at the University of Arts in Tirana, he was sent to Moscow, to the Maxime-Gorki Institute – which he evoked in Twilight of the Eastern Gods – an academic institution that specialized in literary creation where, at the time, all young people of his caliber were sent, those who were part of the "elite troops of socialist realism."

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