John Hodgson

In June 1934, Stalin allegedly called Boris Pasternak and they spoke about the arrest of Osip Mandelstam. A telephone call from the dictator was not something necessarily relished, and in the...

In September 1943, Nazi troops advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokaster, Albania. The very next day, the Germans vanish without a trace. As the townsfolk wonder if they might have dreamt the events...

Why did the taxi crash on the autobahn in Vienna? Who exactly were Besfort Y and Rovena, the mysterious couple who died after being flung from the back seat? How was Besfort connected to the war in...

In this autobiographical novel, Albania’s most renowned novelist and poet Ismail Kadare explores his relationship with his mother in a delicately wrought tale of home, family, creative aspirations,...

At the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in the main square of Constantinople, a niche is carved into ancient stone. Here, the sultan displays the severed heads of his adversaries. People flock to see the...

During the bureaucratic machinery of Albania’s 1945–1991 dictatorship, playwright Rudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. A girl—Linda B.—has been found dead, with a signed...

In the Balkan Peninsula, history’s long-disputed bridge between Asia and Europe, the receding Byzantine empire has left behind a patchwork of warring peoples who fight over everything, from their...