Edith Durham began her travels late in life on her doctor's orders. She sailed to Montenegro and began a love affair with the Balkans that lasted the rest of her life. This is her passionate account of life in the formidable mountainous terrain of Northern Albania.

High Albania: A Victorian Traveller's Balkan Odyssey

From the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April.

Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive. The bride's heart goes out to Gjorg, and even these 'civilised' strangers from the city risk becoming embroiled in the fatal mechanism of vendetta.

Broken April

This is the story of an Italian general, accompanied by his chaplain, charged with the mission of scouring Albania in search of the bones of their fallen countrymen, killed twenty years earlier during World War II.

The General of the Dead Army

Masterful in its simplicity, "Chronicle in Stone" is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city. Through the boy's eyes, we see the terrors of World War II as he witnesses fascist invasions, allied bombings, partisan infighting, and the many faces of human cruelty as well as the simple pleasures of life. 

Evacuating to the countryside, he expects to find an ideal world full of extraordinary things but discovers instead an archaic backwater where a severed arm becomes a talisman and deflowered girls mysteriously vanish. Woven between the chapters of the boy's story are tantalizing fragments of the city's history. As the devastation mounts, the fragments lose coherence, and we perceive firsthand how the violence of war destroys more than just buildings and bridges.

Chronicle in Stone

The behind-the-scenes story of the rise and reign of the world's strangest and most elusive tyrant, Kim Jong Un, by the journalist with the best connections and insights into the bizarrely dangerous world of North Korea.

Since his birth in 1984, Kim Jong Un has been swaddled in myth and propaganda, from the plainly silly--he could supposedly drive a car at the age of three--to the grimly bloody stories of family members who perished at his command.
Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived, abetted by the approval of Donald Trump and diplomacy's weirdest bromance.

Skeptical yet insightful, Fifield creates a captivating portrait of the oddest and most secretive political regime in the world--one that is isolated yet internationally relevant, bankrupt yet in possession of nuclear weapons--and its ruler, the self-proclaimed Beloved and Respected Leader, Kim Jong Un.

The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un

It is 1943, and the Second World War is ravaging Europe. Mussolini decides to pull out of his alliance with the Nazis, and withdraws the Italian troops occupying Albania. Soon after, Nazi forces invade Albania from occupied Greece. The first settlement in their path is the ancient stone city of Gjirokastër, an Albanian stronghold since the fourteenth century. The townsfolk have no choice but to surrender to the Nazis, but are confused when they see that one of the town’s residents, a certain Dr. Gurameto, seems to be showing the invading Nazi Colonel great hospitality. That evening, strains of Schubert from the doctor’s gramophone waft out into the cobbled streets of the city, and the sounds of a dinner party are heard. The sudden disappearance of the Nazis the next morning leaves the town wondering if they might have dreamt the events of the previous night. But as Albania moves into a period of occupation by the Nazis, and then is taken over by the communists, Dr. Gurameto is forced to answer for what happened on the evening of the Nazi’s invasion, and finally explain the events of that long, strange night.

Dealing with themes of resistance in a dictatorship, and steeped in Albanian folklore and legend, "The Fall of the Stone City" shows Kadare at the height of his powers.


The Fall of the Stone City

This is the first full account of a country that, following decades of isolation, has undergone unprecedented changes to its political system: the collapse of communism, the progression to multi-party elections and the upheaval that followed the March 1997 uprising. Miranda Vickers traces the history of the Albanian people from the Ottoman period to the formation of the Albanian Communist Party. Newly revised for this paperback edition, "The Albanians" has now been updated to cover the crisis in Kosovo that led to the first "Western" war in Europe since 1945.


The Albanians: A Modern History

A sinister totalitarian ministry called the Palace of Dreams recruits Mark-Alem to sort, classify, and interpret the dreams of the people in the empire, seeking the master-dreams that give clues to the empire's destiny.

The Palace of Dreams

...a magical parable of love, death and the power of familial bonds. --Stephen Salisbury, New York Times Book Review

Doruntine

Since his mother's death six years ago, Carter Kane has been living out of a suitcase, traveling the globe with his father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Julius Kane. But while Carter's been homeschooled, his younger sister, Sadie, has been living with their grandparents in London. Sadie has just what Carter wants—school friends and a chance at a "normal" life. But Carter has just what Sadie longs for—time with their father. After six years of living apart, the siblings have almost nothing in common. Until now.

On Christmas Eve, Sadie and Carter are reunited when their father brings them to the British Museum, with a promise that he's going to "make things right." But all does not go according to plan: Carter and Sadie watch as Julius summons a mysterious figure, who quickly banishes their father and causes a fiery explosion.

Soon Carter and Sadie discover that the gods of Ancient Egypt are waking, and the worst of them—Set—has a frightening scheme. To save their father, they must embark on a dangerous journey—a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family and its links to the House of Life, a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.

The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1)

In the mid 1930s, two young American scholars voyage to the Albanian highlands, the last remaining natural habitat of the oral epic, with one of the world's first tape recorders in hand. Their mission? To discover how Homer could have composed works such as "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" without ever writing them down. Their research puts them at the center of ethnic strife in the Balkans and, mistaken for foreign spies, they are placed under surveillance. Research and intrigue proceed apace, until a Serbian monk plots a violent end to their project.

A work of inventive genius, "The File On H" is also a profound and eloquent comment on one of the most intractable conflicts of our time.

A funny, satirical tale of two American innocents abroad in search of Homer in modern Albania.

The File on H.

The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial "Stalingrad" as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.
 
In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has interviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, "Stalingrad" is unprecedented and unforgettable.

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943

"From behind the closed door, the man shouts, 'Be on your way - you have no business here!'"
"'Open up, I am the messenger of Death'."

As spring arrives in the Albanian mountain town of B, some strange things are emerging in the thaw. Bank robbers strike the National Bank. Old terrors are dredged up from the shipwreck of history. And ultra-explosive state secrets are threatening to flood the entire nation. Mark, an artist, finds the peaceful rhythms of his life turned upside down by ancient love and modern barbarism and by the particular brutality of a country surprised and divided by its new freedom.

Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

"A Girl in Exile", first published in Albanian in 2009, is set among the bureaucratic machinery of Albania's 1945-1991 dictatorship. While waiting to hear whether his newest play will be approved for production, playwright Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. A girl - Linda B. - has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession.

He soon learns that Linda's family, considered suspect, was exiled to a small town far from the capital, and that she committed suicide. Under the influence of a paranoid regime, Rudian finds himself swept along on a surreal quest to discover what really happened to Linda B. Through layers of intrigue, her story gradually unfolds: how she loved Rudian from a distance, and the risks she was prepared to take so that she could get close to him. He becomes captivated by her story, and disturbed at how he might be culpable for her fate. 

"A Girl in Exile" is a stunning, deeply affecting portrait of life and love under surveillance, infused with myth, wry humor, and the absurdity of a paranoid regime.

A Girl in Exile

In this spellbinding novel, written in Albania and smuggled into France a few pages at a time in the 1980s, Ismail Kadare denounces with rare force the machinery of a dictatorial regime, drawing us back to the ancient roots of tyranny in Western Civilization. During the waning years of Communism, a young worker for the Albanian state-controlled media agency narrates the story of his ill-fated love for the daughter of a high-ranking official. When he witness the ghostly image of Agamemnon-the Ancient Greek king who sacrificed his own daughter for reasons of State-on the reviewing stand during a May Day celebration, he begins to suspect the full catastrophe of his devotion. Also included are "The Blinding Order," a parable of the Ottoman Empire about the uses of terror in authoritarian regimes, and "The Great Wall," a chilling duet between a Chinese official and a soldier in the invading army of the Tamerlane.

Agamemnon's Daughter: A Novella and Stories

"The Highland Lute" became enormously popular in the 1920s and 30s, with its vivid, archetypal characters and panoramic descriptions: the backdrop to Albania's historical battles for freedom and independence from the Turks and Montenegrins. It propelled its author, Gjergj Fishta, to universal recognition as the national poet of Albania until the Communists took power in 1944. On its first public recital in post-Communist Albania, 45 years later, many in the audience still knew parts by heart. Robert Elsie's masterful new translation, the first to appear in English, captures the spirit of the original and, accompanied by a new critical introduction, will introduce the poem to a new generation of admirers.


The Highland Lute

For Hart Evans, being the most popular kid in sixth grade has its advantages. Kids look up to him, and all the teachers let him get away with anything -- all the teachers except the chorus director, Mr. Meinert. When Hart's errant rubber band hits Mr. Meinert on the neck during chorus practice, it's the last straw for the chorus director, who's just learned he's about to lose his job due to budget cuts. So he tells the class they can produce the big holiday concert on their own. Or not. It's all up to them. And who gets elected to run the show? The popular Mr. Hart Evans. 
 
 Hart soon discovers there's a big difference between popularity and leadership, and to his surprise, discovers something else as well -- it's really important to him that this be the best holiday concert ever, and even more important, that it not be the last.

The Last Holiday Concert

Albania is perhaps the last hidden corner of eastern Europe, newly opening its frontiers to travelers after decades of tyranny and instability. Written by an insider and Albania enthusiast, the Bradt guide to Albania takes a fresh look at how and where to explore the heritage of a country influenced by the Greeks, Romans, Italians, and Turks--who have all left their mark on the landscape and culture. Albania boasts a breathtaking natural beauty, splendid and empty beaches, excellent local wines, a Mediterranean climate, and a tradition of hospitality, making it a potentially prime holiday destination, easily accessible by air, ferry via the Greek islands and Italy, or even by road via mainland Greece, Montenegro, or Kosovo.

Features include:
&gt;Archaeological attractions and museums plus historic background
&gt;In-depth coverage of the capital, Tirana
&gt;Cultural background including topics such as communist nostalgia and blood feuds
&gt;Easy-to-follow guide to the Albanian language


Albania, 2nd: The Bradt Travel Guide

Most people conceive of gender as a culturally informed response to a biological imperative. But such rigid notions are overturned by certain women in remote regions of Albania who elect to 'become' men simply for the advantages that accrue to them as a result. They crop their hair, wear men's clothes, roll their own cigarettes, drink brandy and carry guns. In short, their lives are much freer and less regimented than other members of their sex - but at a cost. These women must foreswear sexual relationships, marriage and children. They have been dubbed 'Sworn Virgins'.

What is interesting is that in this region of the Balkans, simply to dress as a man and to behave as a man will earn these women the same respect accorded a man. This is no mean advantage in an area known for sexual inequality and where so many men have suffered violent, premature deaths, thereby heightening the need for more household heads. Traditionally as heads of household, men are revered and the women who attend them utterly subservient. But unlike 'normal' women, Sworn Virgins can inherit and manage property, and, in fact, may even be raised to assume the male role by parents who have no male heirs.

Based on extensive interviews, this book tells the frank and engrossing stories of these women, but also sets their lives within the wider context of a country undergoing radical upheaval and social transformation.

Women Who Become Men: Albanian Sworn Virgins

A bewitching, dark and beautiful debut novel about a girl living in the shadow of a mysterious curse.

It's the accident season, the same time every year. Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom.

The accident season has been part of seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as she can remember. Towards the end of October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them, Cara's family becomes inexplicably accident-prone. They banish knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table edges with padding, switch off electrical items - but injuries follow wherever they go, and the accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession and fear.

But why are they so cursed? And how can they break free?

The Accident Season

A young girl’s father is constantly forcing her to kiss him, and her aunt predicts that she will grow up to be a whore. With Albania's communist regime crumbling around them, sex, dictatorship, and death are inescapable subjects for the girl and her family;though the protagonist of "The Country Where No One Ever Dies" always confronts the ridiculousness of her often brutal reality with unflappable irony and a peculiar kind of common sense. Her name and age changing from moment to moment, she is an unforgettable portrait of the imagination under siege, while "The Country Where No One Ever Dies" is itself a one-of-a-kind atlas to a land where black comedy is simply a way of life.

The Country Where No One Ever Dies

At the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in the main square of Constantinople, a niche is carved into ancient stone. Here, the sultan displays the severed heads of his adversaries. People flock to see the latest head and gossip about the state of the empire: the province of Albania is demanding independence again, and the niche awaits a new trophy…

Tundj Hata, the imperial courier, is charged with transporting heads to the capital – a task he relishes and performs with fervour. But as he travels through obscure and impoverished territories, he makes money from illicit side-shows, offering villagers the spectacle of death. The head of the rebellious Albanian governor would fetch a very high price.

The Traitor’s Niche is a surreal tale of rebellion and tyranny, in a land where armies carry scarecrows, state officials ban entire languages, and the act of forgetting is more complicated than remembering.

The Traitor's Niche


  An exhilarating, blackly funny exploration of migration and borders from an Albanian who grew up longing to cross to Greece, only to find reality did not match fantasy

 
After spending his childhood and school years in Albania, imagining that the miniskirts and game shows of Italian state TV were the reality of life in the West, and fantasizing accordingly about living on the other side of the border, the 1985 death of Albanian Communist leader Hoxha at last enables Gazmend Kapllani to make his escape. However, on arriving in the promised land, he finds neither lots of willing leggy lovelies nor a warm welcome from his long-lost Greek cousins. Instead, he gets banged up in a detention center in a small border town. As Gazi and his fellow immigrants try to find jobs, they begin to plan their future lives in Greece, imagining riches and successes which always remain just beyond their grasp. The sheer absurdity of their plans and their new lives is overwhelming. Both detached and involved, ironic and emotional, Kapllani interweaves the story of his experience with meditations upon border syndrome—a mental state, as much as a geographical experience—to create a brilliantly observed, amusing, and perceptive debut.

A Short Border Handbook

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat. 

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. 

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Stalinism, that particularly brutal phase of the Communist experience, came to an end in most of Europe with the death of Stalin in 1953. However, in one country - Albania - Stalinism survived virtually unscathed until 1990. The regime that the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha led from 1944 until his death in 1985 was incomparably severe. Such was the reign of terror that no audible voice of opposition or dissent ever arose in the Balkan state and Albania became isolated from the rest of the world and utterly inward-looking. Three decades after his death, the spectre of Hoxha still lingers over the country, yet many people – inside and outside Albania – know little about the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for so many decades. This book provides the first biography of Hoxha available in English. Using unseen documents and first-hand interviews, journalist Blendi Fevziu pieces together the life of a tyrannical ruler in a biography which will be essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan history and communist studies

Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania

Young ladies in the Victorian and Edwardian eras were not expected to travel unaccompanied, and certainly not to the remote corners of Southeast Europe, then part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. But Edith Durham was no ordinary lady. In 1900, at the age of 37, Durham set sail for the Balkans for the first time, a trip which changed the course of her life. Her experiences kindled a profound love of the region which saw her return frequently in the following decades. She became a confidante of the King of Montenegro, ran a hospital in Macedonia and, following the outbreak of the First Balkan War in 1912, became one of the world's first female war correspondents. Her popularity in the region earned her the affectionate title 'Queen of the Mountains' and she is fondly remembered in Albania until this day. Marcus Tanner here tells the fascinating story of Durham's relationship with the Balkans, painting a vivid portrait of a remarkable, if sometimes formidable, woman.

Albania's Mountain Queen: Edith Durham and the Balkans

In 1958, Kadare was selected to pursue his writing and literary studies as a graduate student in Moscow at the prestigious Gorky Institute for World Literature. "Twilight of the Eastern Gods" is Kadare's fictionalized recreation of his time spent at this "factory of the intellect," a place created to produce a new generation of poets, novelists, and playwrights, all adhering to the state-sanctioned socialist realist” aesthetic.

During his time at the Gorky Institute, a kind of miniature Soviet Union where writers from deepest Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the Caucasus all came to study, Kadare was caught up in the furore over Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize win, when the Soviet Union demanded that Pasternak refuse the foreign, bourgeois award, or be sentenced to exile. Kadare’s time at the Institute, the drunken nights, corrupt professors, and enforced aesthetics are fictionalized in a novel that entwines Russian and Albanian myth with history. "Twilight of the Eastern Gods" is a portrait of a city and a story of youth, disenchantment, and the incredible importance of the written word.


Twilight of the Eastern Gods

During Enver Hoxha's totalitarian rule following World War Two, Albania became the most isolated and paranoid European state. Two brothers -- sons of a war hero and domineering official -- come to embody the only possibilities for life under these conditions: capitulation or resistance. Viktor becomes a willing soldier and brings home a beautiful girl, Helena, as his wife. Ismail, shunned by his father and by nature a poet, is emotionally blinded from the mysterious death of his mother when he was 4. As an irresistible attraction develops between Helena and Ismail, they are compelled to uncover the long-hidden tragedy to which they are all heirs.

The Albanian Affairs

From the summer of 1943, small teams of elite British soldiers began to parachute into Axis-occupied Albania. These men belonged to Britain's Special Operations Executive, a secret organisation set up early in the Second World War to encourage resistance and carry out sabotage behind enemy lines. Their task was to find and support bands of local guerrillas and harass the Axis as best they could. None of these young Britons had been there before or knew what was waiting for them.

Trying to survive in extreme conditions and formidable terrain, SOE missions lived in constant danger of capture and death and were plagued by illness, lice and frostbite. Casualties were appalling. Most guerrillas, meanwhile, seemed keener to kill each other than fight Italians and Germans. British backing went eventually to Albania's communist-led partisans. It remains a controversial choice. Their leader, Enver Hoxha, seized power at the end of the war and was to rule with a brutal hand for forty years.

In "The Wildest Province", Roderick Bailey draws on interviews with survivors, long-hidden diaries and recently declassified files to tell the full story of this remarkable corner of SOE history. Through the experiences of individual SOE officers, including Anthony Quayle, the actor, and Julian Amery, the future MP and Minister, he reveals the grim realities of life in the field. He looks, too, at the dilemmas faced and created as the British sought to decide which guerrillas to arm. And by shedding light on what was going on at SOE headquarters, Bailey settles the enduring question of whether or not British communists in SOE, perhaps even colleagues of the Cambridge spies, had conspired to lead British policy astray.

The Wildest Province: SOE in the Land of the Eagle

Katie McGuire appears to have it all. A devoted husband, a job she loved, and a comfortable lifestyle. 
Helen Swenson is a successful financial director of a prominent investment firm, with an unfaithful husband, and few friends. 
Their husbands' annual trip to Padre Island National Seashore to reunite with their air force pilot squad becomes a pivotal point for the two women. Their lives take on a completely new meaning when an undeniable magnetism between them draws them together. 
Passion and secrecy becomes the norm, as they have no choice but to surrender to their attraction. Can the vacation love affair continue? When they leave for their respective homes, will they regret what happened? 
Life is not that easy to change and the people around them are the hardest to convince. There is no more powerful motivation than love. Except hate and there are plenty of people who want to see their relationship destroyed. 
Will Katie and Helen be able to make a life together work or succumb to doubts and the pressures of family? 
This story will fill you with the thrill of passion and the tenderness of love.

If I Were A Boy

In the early 1990s, Albania, arguably Europe's most closed and repressive state, began a startling transition out of forty years of self-imposed Communist isolation. Albanians who were not allowed to practice religion, travel abroad, wear jeans, or read "decadent" Western literature began to devour the outside world. They opened caf�s, companies, and newspapers. Previously banned rock music blared in the streets.



Modern Albania offers a vivid history of the Albanian Communist regime's fall and the trials and tribulations that led the country to become the state it is today. The book provides an in-depth look at the Communists' last Politburo meetings and the first student revolts, the fall of the Stalinist regime, the outflows of refugees, the crash of the massive pyramid-loan schemes, the war in neighboring Kosovo, and Albania's relationship with the United States. Fred Abrahams weaves together personal experience from more than twenty years of work in Albania, interviews with key Albanians and foreigners who played a role in the country's politics since 1990--including former Politburo members, opposition leaders, intelligence agents, diplomats, and founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army--and a close examination of hundreds of previously secret government records from Albania and the United States. A rich, narratively-driven account, Modern Albania gives readers a front-row seat to the dramatic events of the last battle of Cold War Europe.

Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe

In 1997 the previously little-known and isolated Balkan country of Albania exploded as the first armed uprising in mainland Europe since the 1920s brought the country to the brink of civil war. As the violence spread first to neighbouring Kosovo, then to south-east Serbia and finally to former Yugoslav Macedonia, the Albanian question increasingly took center stage in world affairs. This book examines Albania's place in the Balkans, a region which had been forced simultaneously to come to terms with the realities of a post-Communist world and the threat of Slobodan Milosevic's "Greater Serbia" project.


The Albanian Question: Reshaping the Balkans

Life is War: Surviving Dictatorship in Communist Albania is a collection of oral histories that guides readers through through the decades (1944-1992) in which everything was controlled by the Communist Party; what work one could do, what food was available, and even who one could marry. The reader accompanies Shannon, the author and historian, through intimate interviews with six Albanian men and women. We hear how everyday people survived shocking living conditions, political persecution and oppression dependent on ethnicity, political status, gender and sexuality. This is a thorough and vivid history of lived communism in Albania, charting political and ideological shifts through the experiences of those who survived. Life is War stands as remarkable and profound testimony to the resilience of humanity in the face of unrelenting political terror. An accurate and precise historical work, engagingly rendered from life narratives, it plunges the reader into the difficult emotional truths that are at the core of remembering Albania's communist past. Life is War is a valuable contribution to studies of everyday life under communism and dictatorship. Eloquently written and expertly researched, it will appeal to readers interested in life histories, war, communism, European history and trauma studies.

Life Is War: Surviving Dictatorship in Communist Albania

June 28, 1389: six hundred years before Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic called for a new massacre in Kosovo, there took place, on the Field of the Blackbirds, a battle shrouded in legend. A coalition of Serbs, Albanian Catholics, Bosnians, and Rumanians confronted and were defeated by the Ottoman army of Sultan Murad. This battle became the centerpiece of Serbian nationalist ideology, justifying the campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Albanian Kosovars. In three stories resonant with mystery, Ismail Kadare explores the legend and the consequences of that defeat.
-- A heartfelt and yet clear-eyed lament for a land riven by hatreds as old as the Homeric epics and as young as the latest news broadcast.

Elegy for Kosovo: Stories

King Zog was a curiosity, and so he has remained the most unusual European monarch of the 20th century, a man entirely without royal connections who created his own kingdom. By contemporaries, he was variously labeled "the last ruler of romance," "an appalling gangster," "the modern Napoleon," "the finest patriot," and "frankly a cad." Even today his reputation is disputed, but Zog was undeniably one of the foremost figures in Albanian history. Though notorious for cut-throat political intrigue, he promised to bring order and progress to a land that had long known little of either. "It was I who made Albania," he claimed.

King Zog: Self-Made Monarch of Albania

This enlightening work by renowned psychic Sylvia Browne contains the Gnostic tenets of her church, the Society of Novus Spiritus, and is a map of our charts regardless of what spiritual path we follow.

It has taken many years of research to put together what at first seems simple tenets to follow, but in going deeper, this book carries within it the very heart of humankind’s search for our own spirituality.  Sylvia has also included many details from her own personal journey, which she feels is comparable to the quest that each of us follows to find our own God-center. As we travel this road, we can realize that long-forgotten, yet simple and truthful goal of viewing our life on Earth as our path to God.

If You Could See What I See: The Tenets of Novus Spiritus

The first English translation of an eyewitness account of the Ottoman sieges of Shkodra (Albania) in 1474 and 1478-79, written by a besieged Shkodran citizen who fought in the battles and would later become a priest in Italy. The book is considered both history and literature, written in classical Latin in 1504 for a Western audience concerned about the advance of the Ottomans into the heart of Europe. It is considered by scholars to be a seminal source of history providing significant details about the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Albanians, Sultan Mehmed II "The Conqueror," religious conflict, late-medieval siege tactics, and the development of weaponry. Though the account is history, it unfolds as a gripping story with all the human drama and pathos that accompanies warfare. Inside are rousing speeches, intense battle scenes, passionate prayers, and counsel for future generations. Barleti and his contemporaries considered Shkodra to be the shield of Europe (indeed this was the final great battle before the Ottomans attacked Otronto in 1480). Barleti's work comprises only 50% of the work, as this edition includes supplemental material such as a foreword by Prof. David Abulafia, Prof. Aleks Buda's historical introduction, "The War of Shkodra" ("Bellum Scodrense") by George Merula, a panegyric to the Venetian Senate by Marin Beçikemi, passages from Ottoman chroniclers about the siege (A. Pashazade, Tursun, Kivami, Idris-i Bidlisi, K. Pashazade), and new maps and historical commentary by translator-editor David Hosaflook.

The Siege of Shkodra: Albania's Courageous Stand Against Ottoman Conquest, 1478

Otto of Schlepsig is risking his neck as an acrobat in a third-rate circus in the middle of nowhere when news arrives that the land of Shqiperi has invited Prince Halim Eddin to become its new king. Otto doesn’t know the prince from Adam, but he does happen to look just like him–a coincidence that inspires Otto with a mad plan to assume Halim’s identity and rule in his stead. True, Shqiperi is an uncivilized backwater, but even in uncivilized backwaters kings live better than acrobats. Plus, kingship in Shqiperi comes with a harem. Rank, as they say, has its privileges.

With his friend Max, a sword-swallowing giant whose chronic cough makes every performance a potential tonsillectomy, Otto embarks on a rollicking journey filled with feats of derring-do, wondrous magic, and beautiful maidens–well, beautiful women. And that’s before he enters a royal world that is truly fantastical.

Albania

High Albania: A Victorian Traveller's Balkan Odyssey

Mary Edith Durham

Broken April

Ismail Kadare

The General of the Dead Army

Ismail Kadare

Chronicle in Stone

Ismail Kadare

The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un

Anna Fifield

The Fall of the Stone City

Ismail Kadare

The Albanians: A Modern History

Miranda Vickers

The Palace of Dreams

Ismail Kadare

Doruntine

Ismail Kadare

The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1)

Rick Riordan

The File on H.

Ismail Kadare

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943

Antony Beevor

Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

Ismail Kadare

A Girl in Exile

Ismail Kadare

Agamemnon's Daughter: A Novella and Stories

Ismail Kadare

The Highland Lute

Gjergj Fishta

The Last Holiday Concert

Andrew Clements

Albania, 2nd: The Bradt Travel Guide

Gillian Gloyer

Women Who Become Men: Albanian Sworn Virgins

Antonia Young

The Accident Season

Moïra Fowley-Doyle

The Country Where No One Ever Dies

Ornela Vorpsi

The Traitor's Niche

Ismail Kadare

A Short Border Handbook

Gazmend Kapllani

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Erik Larson

Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania

Blendi Fevziu

Albania's Mountain Queen: Edith Durham and the Balkans

Marcus Tanner

Twilight of the Eastern Gods

Ismail Kadare

The Albanian Affairs

Susana Fortes

The Wildest Province: SOE in the Land of the Eagle

Roderick Bailey

If I Were A Boy

Erin O'Reilly

Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe

Fred C. Abrahams

The Albanian Question: Reshaping the Balkans

Miranda Vickers

Life Is War: Surviving Dictatorship in Communist Albania

Shannon Woodcock

Elegy for Kosovo: Stories

Ismail Kadare

King Zog: Self-Made Monarch of Albania

Jason Tomes

If You Could See What I See: The Tenets of Novus Spiritus

Sylvia Browne

The Siege of Shkodra: Albania's Courageous Stand Against Ottoman Conquest, 1478

Marin Barleti

Every Inch a King

Harry Turtledove