http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050602/ennew_afp/afpentertainmentalbania_050602171804- Ismail Kadare wins first-ever Man Booker International Prize Thu Jun 2, 1:18 PM
ET
LONDON (AFP) - Ismail Kadare, Albania's best-known poet and novelist, was named
as the winner of the Man Booker International Prize, a brand-new laurel for the
world's finest writers.
Kadare, 69, was honoured for the full body of his work, including such novels as
"Broken April," "Spring Flowers, Spring Frost" and "The General of the Dead
Army."
His prize-winning 1988 book "The Concert" was set against the backdrop of
communist Albania's break with long-time patron China, while "The Pyramid" was
set in ancient Egypt.
He reflected on his native Balkans in "Elegy for Kosovo," published in 2000, a
year after NATO went to war against Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia to
end Serbian repression in the predominantly ethnic Albanian province.
"Ismail Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture -- its history, its passion,
its folklore, its politics, its disasters," said John Carey, the British
literary critic who led the panel of three judges.
"He is a universal writer in a tradition of story-telling that goes back to
Homer."
In a statement released in London by the Man Booker organisers, Kadare -- who
fled to France in 1990 as a refugee before the collapse of dictator Enver
Hoxha's communist regime -- said: "I feel deeply honoured."
"I am a writer from the Balkan fringe, a part of Europe which has long been
notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness -- armed conflicts, civil
wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on," he said.
"My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realise that
this region, to which my country, Albania, belongs, can also give rise to other
kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement, in the field of the
arts, literature and civilisation."
"I would like to take the prize that I have been awarded as confirmation that my
confidence and my hopes have not been misplaced."
The Man Booker International Prize, awarded for the first time this year, seeks
to recognise a living author from anywhere in the world "who has contributed
significantly to world literature".
It is a spin-off from the Man Booker Prize that is awarded every October for the
best work of fiction by a British, Irish or Commonwealth author, won this year
by Alan Hollinghurst for "The Line of Beauty."
Kadare is to receive his prize of 60,000 pounds (88,800 euros, 109,000 dollars)
plus a trophy at a ceremony in Scotland's capital Edinburgh on June 27, with an
extra 15,000 pounds for a translator of his choice.
Eighteen other authors were shortlisted for the honour, including the late Saul
Bellow, Germany's Gunter Grass, Czech-born Milan Kundera, Egypt's Naguib
Mahfouz, US writers Philip Roth and John Updike, and Canada's Margaret Atwood.
Kadare, who now divides his time between France and Albania, has two books
forthcoming -- "The Successor," due out in January next year, and "Agamemnon's
Daughter," with a publication date yet to be announced.