Salon

Last week, Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, 69, was named the first-ever winner of the Man Booker International Prize. The prize was instituted after criticism that the original Man Booker Prize only covered writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, ignoring the United States and non-English-speaking countries. The international variety is open to any writer whose works are available in English, and it is awarded for a body of work rather than a specific novel.

The shortlist for the new prize looked formidable. It included past Booker winner Ian McEwan; the doyen of Latin American magical realism, Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the philosophical Czech Milan Kundera; the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem; and many other celebrated names. One of the nominees, U.S. author Saul Bellow, died on April 5 and "was no longer eligible," curtly states the Booker web site.

With such an impressive list, it came as a surprise to many that the prize went to the relatively lesser-known Kadare. The writer was born in an Albanian village near the Greek border. He studied first at the University of Tirana and then at Moscow's Gorky Literary Institute, a unique institution that trains future writers. So can the Russian literary establishment bask in the rays of Kadare's newfound fame? Probably not, because the writer's comments on his Russian education are far from flattering: "I had an entirely negative training, and that's probably the best kind there is: My formal literary education was, 'I will never, ever write like that.'"

After working for decades under difficult conditions in Albania, Kadare fled in 1990, just months before the collapse of the communist regime. He received political asylum in France, where he has lived ever since.

Best known for his epic novels "The General of the Dead Army" and "Broken April," Kadare refuses to be called a political writer. He is also allergic to the term "magical realism," which has often been attached to his style. On receiving the prize, Kadare said he was happy that his native region, "the Balkan fringe," had produced a piece of news unrelated to bloodshed or atrocities. The writer stressed that Albania -- until recently, an isolated Stalinist dictatorship -- was "an epic zone" that had allowed him to address universal themes. A sentiment, perhaps, that many Russians can share.

Kadare will receive the £60,000 award at a ceremony in Edinburgh later this month. As part of his prize, he will name an English translator of his works who will be the recipient of another Booker "first" -- the translation prize, worth £15,000.