Like a Prisoner

Fatos Lubonja is a writer and editor of the quarterly journal Përpjekja [Endeavor], a representative of the Forum for Democracy, and a leading figure in Albania's political life. At twenty three, Lubonja was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for "agitation and propaganda" after police found his diaries, which contained criticisms of Enver Hoxha. He was later re- sentenced without trail and spent a total of 17 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He was released in 1991. Lubonja's first book in English, Second Sentence: Inside the Albanian Gulag, was published to great acclaim by I. B. Tauris (2006) followed by False Apocalypse (Istros, 2015). Among his many literary prizes, he received the Alberto Moravia Prize for International Literature in 2002 and the Herder Prize for Literature in 2004 and the Prince Claus Award, 2015.

Lubonja's telling of the events are gripping, and we learn that below any surface visible to outsiders, there was an intelligentsia, silenced by covert violence. If only their voice could have been heard and supported, how very different Albania would be today; Cental and Eastern European Review; The cinematic effect of Lubonja's description is enhanced by his narrative deivces... In setting himself the task of exposing vested interests and corruption, Fatos Lubonja show's that Albania still needs people of his intellectual and moral calibre;Times Literary Supplement