Albania's 'second greatest living writer' was a hoax, but does it really matter?

guardian.co.uk
The author of Winter in Tirane, Jiri Kajane, turned out to be fictional himself. This kind of hoaxing has a long and irrepressible history

The Albanian writer Jiri Kajane, who is about to die this morning aged 65, found more literary success abroad than he ever did at home. The Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha was no place for free spirits, and Kajane could count himself lucky that his satirical drama Neser Perdite (Tomorrow, Every Day) earned him no more than a ban from the ministry of culture. In 1981 the play had one performance in Tirana. Thereafter, Kajane stuck to short stories that were to make his small reputation in the west. Long after Hoxha's death in 1985, Kajane felt his position too precarious for him to publish work in Albania. By the end of the last century he was more famous in Chicago than he was in his birthplace, Kruje, the small hill town recognised in Albanian history for its resistance to the Ottoman empire and Italian conquest. It was a paradox he enjoyed.....more...
read more: guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/17/ian-jack-jiri-kajane-albanian-hoax