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Helena Kadare. Nje grua nga Tirana. MCM. 1994. 177 pages. 190 ALL.
Helena Gushi-Kadare. Une femme de Tirana. Jusuf Vrioni, Anne-Marie Autissier, trs. Paris. Stock. 1995. 267 pages. 120 F. ISBN 2-234-04409-X.
Elena Kadare (b. 1943) has never been content to stand back devotedly in the shadow of her more illustrious spouse, Ismail Kadare. Indeed, she has become somewhat of a literary monument herself. It was in the year 1970 that she published the novel Nje lindje e veshtire (A Difficult Birth), becoming the first woman ever to publish a novel in the Albanian language. Since that time, Elena Kadare has been a visible and creative element in her country's contemporary literary culture.
With the exception of the rare short story in French, English, or Italian which may have appeared at the time in inaccessible publications from Tirana or in equally obscure books and periodicals in Western Europe, none of the works by Elena Kadare--prose for the most part--has...