PART OF DEPAUL UNIVERSITY'S HIDAI "EDDIE" BREGU LECTURES: Join translator Ani Kokobobo and Suzana Vuljevic in a discussion of Ismail Kadare's Essays on World Literature.

Please join us for the inaugural session of Albanian Literature Today: Meditations on the Craft of Literary Translation Across Genres and Spaces, a monthly virtual series of Hidai Bregu Lectures hosted by DePaul University, where we welcome Slavicist and translator Ani Kokobobo, translator of Ismail Kadare’s Essays on World Literature (Restless Books, 2018), in conversation with translator and historian Suzana Vuljevic.

Ismail Kadare, winner of the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2020, the Man Booker International Prize in 2005, and frequent contender for the Nobel Prize, has risen to a coveted position as the sole and uncontested representative of Albanian letters on the world stage. As a result of his extraordinary literary success, modern Albanian literature has largely come to be understood through the prism of communism and the specter of totalitarianism. In this conversation, Kokobobo will speak about the experience of translating Kadare’s essays, Kadare’s influence on world literature (as well as how his work has been influenced by classical literature), and the role of translation in the dissemination of world literature.