The Economist

All the fun of the Tirana book fair

Nov 15th 2011, 11:15 by T.J. | TIRANA

IN RECENT years the news from Albania has been dominated by the endless political struggle between Sali Berisha, the prime minister, and Edi Rama, the leader of the opposition. But suddenly, the clouds seem to have lifted. Mr Rama’s Socialists are back in parliament, talking to Mr Berisha’s people, and a resolution has been found to a disputed mayoral election in Tirana. Relieved Albanians are now talking about something else: books.

The event of the month has been the Tirana book fair, which ended on Sunday. I have never seen anything like it in the Albanian capital. Some of the more-than-80 stalls were virtually stormed by people waving cash in the hope of not missing out on the latest bestsellers. Ambassadors, bishops, celebrities and politicians were all out in force.

Yet the belle of the ball was Elena Kadare, who won an award for best writer of the year. Her new book is in part a kiss-and-tell memoir about life with her husband Ismail, who is regarded by many people here, himself included I believe, as the world’s greatest living Albanian. Much to the amusement of the local press Ms Kadare's book discusses her husband's various love affairs. The literary power couple, still very much together, spend half their year in Paris and half in Tirana.

Happily Albanians now seem keener to read about politics than to see it played out in the streets. The big political bestseller of the fair was Mr Rama’s book "Kurban" ("Sacrifice"), a memoir focusing on his time as mayor of Tirana, during which the city was transformed from a mess into a reasonably pleasant place to live.

After disputed local elections in May Mr Rama was forced from office by Lulzim Basha, of Mr Berisha’s party. When Mr Basha arrived at the town hall, a sheep was sacrificed there. This practice, which appears to hark back to Ottoman times, is what gave Mr Rama's book its title; its cover shows blood spattered over the image of a sheep.

Mr Rama's book-signings attracted large crowds (see footage from last Thursday). On Sunday an ecstatic Arlinda Dudaj, the publisher, shouted across the crowd to me that she thought 8,000 copies had been sold in a few days. Such figures would be regarded as a huge success for similar books in Britain, a far larger and richer country. But Mr Berisha has been busily denouncing his rival's book, and when he visited the fair he apparently refused to walk past Mrs Dudaj’s stall.

Henri Cili, another publisher, has also hit the big time. Among his blockbusters this year is a biography of Enver Hoxha, the Albanian communist dictator who died in 1985. “It is crazy,” said Mario Cili, Henri’s brother and the company’s managing director. He claimed that 14,000 copies had been sold in the past three weeks.

The book, by Blendi Fevziu, a well-known Albanian journalist, is the first serious account of Hoxha's life to draw on Albanian archives. With luck it will be translated for foreign audiences. Adrian Civici, an economist, told me that he had read the book in two days, and that it could have been subtitled "The man who killed all his friends".

Yet despite the hustle of the fair people are buying fewer books in Albania, just as they are across the world. Piro Misha, a well-known publisher, told me that sales were down as much as 30% compared to a year ago. And the eBook revolution has yet to begin here: few iPads or Kindles have been sold in Albania, and so few publishers have bothered digitising their books.

There was one more surprise at the fair. A big white marquee run by Serbs, selling grilled meat and beer to the sounds of Serbian pop, proved as popular with Tiranans as the books. On Saturday, a day before the fair closed, it was packed up and the Serbs left. Kosovars and nationalist Albanians were reported to have complained. A more prosaic account had it that people staggering out of the fair with heavy bags of books had simply guzzled all the meat and drunk the tent dry.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2011/11/books-albania