SOURCE: Falcoff, Mark. “Notes from the Dark Side of the Moon.” World Affairs 153, no. 3 (winter 1991): 113-15.

In the following essay, Falcoff characterizes Printemps albanais as a narrative reflecting the difficulties of writing under a totalitarian dictatorship.

“You cannot imagine what a titanic task it is to produce real literature in what used to be called East bloc countries!” This was the way that Albania's greatest novelist, Ismail Kadaré, justified his decision in 1990 to abandon his country after three decades of playing cat-and-mouse with censors, rivals, and party “cultural” officers. Kadaré's decision struck at the very heart of the Albanian system, for he alone of its writers had won a serious reputation abroad and was one of the very few who was allowed to travel (for brief periods) to the West. (At the time of his defection he was, in fact, in France to promote the publication of...