Overview
Essays on the Awareness of Loss in Contemporary Albanian Literature: Voices that Come From the Abyss is the first scholarly monograph on the concept of loss in Albanian poetry and life writing of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It represents the first academic contribution to an international audience dedicated to three women writers that personified loss in communist Albania: Musine Kokalari, the first Albanian woman writer and political dissident; Bedi Pipa, the first woman known to have authored a diary in Albanian literature; and Drita Çomo, author of a diary and poetry written in secret in political exile under communism. Their works bring forth the necessity to re-visit the history of Albanian literature and promote interdisciplinary and comparative studies beyond Albanian literature. Shatro studies the exceptional capacity of poetry to carry loss to the point of articulating the unsaid, thus giving a voice to silence. She argues that through diary, memoir, epistolary and poetry, all five authors provide different views of loss and its challenging ethical implications in relation to death, memory, and freedom.
Full Product Details
Author: Bavjola Gami Shatro
Publisher: Lexington Books
Imprint: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Dimensions:
Width: 16.00cm
, Height: 2.20cm
, Length: 23.70cm
Weight: 0.576kg
ISBN: 9781666924770
ISBN 10: 1666924776
Pages: 292
Publication Date: 15 July 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
"""A sensitive, scholarly, and original reading of key works in contemporary Albanian literature that opens up the depths of those works while simultaneously illuminating ways in which poetic works as such bear witness to suffering, loss, and the struggle to live responsibly. Eloquently written in a voice that measures up to its own topic."" --Dennis J. Schmidt, Western Sydney University ""In Essays on the Awareness of Loss in Contemporary Albanian Literature: Voices that Come From the Abyss, Bavjola Shatro conducts a ground-breaking literary analysis of various genres - diary, memoir, and poetry- by women writers in contemporary Albanian Literature, highlighting the importance of understanding loss in various dimensions, including intellectual, professional, and personal aspects, around the effects of the communist regime. Gami Shatro's innovative [analysis] of unexplored works of literature expands the horizons of not only literatures from the Balkans, but also studies on loss and memory, world literature, and comparative literature."" --Beyza Lorenz, University of North Georgia ""In this collection of five essays on Albanian writers of the 20th century, Bavjola Gami Shatro sheds light on loss as both an individual experience and a collective one. Her close readings of memoire, narrative and poetry convey the personal ordeal of loss, whether the loss be of a loved one, of one's moral self or of one's life. But these readings also map the course of the history of a literature. After 1944, social and political forces in Albania instituted a program of repression to silence any voice that dared to resist their power to control what was to be remembered and what was instead to be lost to memory. Yet these essays remind us that literature has its power, too. Once the writer has written, once the voice has spoken, the word is never completely lost. The history of Albanian literature attests to the truth that a people's literature is always indeterminate, awaiting the retrieval of voices only temporarily lost. To return this voice to its collective Albanian audience as this work does is an invaluable cultural contribution to Albania's unique literary history."" --Susan L. Rosenstreich, editor of Mediterranean Studies ""This fascinating and important book illuminates the importance of the life biography and works of five Albanian writers and poets, who share the experience of maintaining their dignity and voice under severe political repression. Gami Shatro's selection is well chosen and points to the value of the diary, letters, memoirs, and poetry to encourage us to reflect on the word and body and their power and resilience in a life lived under political authoritarianism. Gami Gami Shatro takes great care in her evaluation of the writers as they are complex and endured many challenges, personal and political. Yet the lasting message is that loss does not mean losing hope. This book's subject matter resonates with contemporary world events and questions concerning humanity. Not only does this work make an invaluable contribution to literature, but it is relevant to studies in law, where law and literature studies are strong and pathbreaking, and where legal biographies form an important to wider discourses about law and legal principles, broadly speaking. Many legal developments came about as a response to severe political repression. Gami Shatro's work will appeal to scholars across a wide range of disciplines."" --Agata Fijalkowski, Leeds Beckett University"
""A sensitive, scholarly, and original reading of key works in contemporary Albanian literature that opens up the depths of those works while simultaneously illuminating ways in which poetic works as such bear witness to suffering, loss, and the struggle to live responsibly. Eloquently written in a voice that measures up to its own topic."" ""In Essays on the Awareness of Loss in Contemporary Albanian Literature: Voices that Come From the Abyss, Bavjola Shatro conducts a ground-breaking literary analysis of various genres - diary, memoir, and poetry- by women writers in contemporary Albanian Literature, highlighting the importance of understanding loss in various dimensions, including intellectual, professional, and personal aspects, around the effects of the communist regime. Gami Shatro's innovative [analysis] of unexplored works of literature expands the horizons of not only literatures from the Balkans, but also studies on loss and memory, world literature, and comparative literature."" ""In this collection of five essays on Albanian writers of the 20th century, Bavjola Gami Shatro sheds light on loss as both an individual experience and a collective one. Her close readings of memoire, narrative and poetry convey the personal ordeal of loss, whether the loss be of a loved one, of one's moral self or of one's life. But these readings also map the course of the history of a literature. After 1944, social and political forces in Albania instituted a program of repression to silence any voice that dared to resist their power to control what was to be remembered and what was instead to be lost to memory. Yet these essays remind us that literature has its power, too. Once the writer has written, once the voice has spoken, the word is never completely lost. The history of Albanian literature attests to the truth that a people's literature is always indeterminate, awaiting the retrieval of voices only temporarily lost. To return this voice to its collective Albanian audience as this work does is an invaluable cultural contribution to Albania's unique literary history."" ""This fascinating and important book illuminates the importance of the life biography and works of five Albanian writers and poets, who share the experience of maintaining their dignity and voice under severe political repression. Gami Shatro's selection is well chosen and points to the value of the diary, letters, memoirs, and poetry to encourage us to reflect on the word and body and their power and resilience in a life lived under political authoritarianism. Gami Gami Shatro takes great care in her evaluation of the writers as they are complex and endured many challenges, personal and political. Yet the lasting message is that loss does not mean losing hope. This book's subject matter resonates with contemporary world events and questions concerning humanity. Not only does this work make an invaluable contribution to literature, but it is relevant to studies in law, where law and literature studies are strong and pathbreaking, and where legal biographies form an important to wider discourses about law and legal principles, broadly speaking. Many legal developments came about as a response to severe political repression. Gami Shatro's work will appeal to scholars across a wide range of disciplines.""
Author Information
Bavjola Gami Shatro is associate professor of literature at Aleksandër Moisiu University in Albania and is President of South East European Studies Association (SEESA), USA.
