Poetry
Kujtesa e ajrit
Not translated into English
Visar Zhiti · 1993
Synopsis
A collection of poems that bears witness to life in prison under the dictatorship and to the dawn of democracy. Deprived of paper and pencil, the poet composed from memory, kept dozens of poems in his head and entrusted them to fellow prisoners who learned them by heart, before his family smuggled them out, hidden in the straw of mattresses, in bags or in clothes. The verses, of great gentleness, abound in images.
Context
The collection appeared in 1993, when the author was forty-one, six years after his release; his first manuscript, The Rhapsody of the Life of Roses, had been blocked by the censors, and an expert report by the Writers' League had served to convict him. Zhiti later recounted his imprisonment in Rrugët e ferrit, devoted to the Spaç prison. A selection of his poems has appeared in English in The Condemned Apple, translated by Robert Elsie; the collection has not been translated on its own.
Who it is for
To read the poetry born in Enver Hoxha's prisons, and what it cost those who wrote it.
Prizes and reception
His American publisher presents him as the greatest living Albanian poet; Illinois has made 28 January a day in his name.