“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

“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

“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

“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