In November 1959, Frank Vadasz, a former citizen of pre-war Czechoslovakia, wrote to Josef Josten, a renowned Czech journalist in exile in London. In his letter, conceived a few months ahead of the Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe), California, Vadasz asked Josten to lobby the US Postmaster General, Arthur Summerfield, to make a certain stamp official postage for the Olympic Games. Vadasz had heard that in March 1960, the US would issue two stamps depicting Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a pre-war statesman and father of Czechoslovak independence, as a champion of liberty. He wanted the stamp to be printed earlier to coincide with the Games and make it the only stamp available in the Olympic Village. He argued: “It would be great propaganda by the US Post Office and a slap in the face to the Czechoslovak communist regime if all the participants of the games had to write letters home with a Masaryk stamp (and the Olympic symbol). The Czechoslovak post would not be able to return such letters!” Unfortunately, Vadasz’s plan did not work, and the stamps were issued in March as planned. However, there were other, more successful, Czechoslovak attempts to use the Olympics as a platform for protest before and after Vadasz’s plot.

A letter from Frank Vadasz to Josef Josten, Josten Collection of Second World War Government in Exile material formed by Josef Josten (1913-1985), donated to the British Library Philatelic Collections in 1986. 

Marie Provazníková, coach of the Czechoslovak women’s gymnastics team at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, where her team won the gold medal, decided to defect to protest the lack of freedom following the 1948 coup d’état by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. An activist in the Sokol Movement and a believer in democracy, she was a supporter of former president Edvard Beneš. Provazníková joined a group of six Czechoslovakian and two Hungarian Olympic team members who refused to return to their homelands. After settling in the USA, she continued to work actively for Sokol, promoting its ideals and writing about its history and principles. 

Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner, co-founder of Sokol. Illustration from Josef Kučera, Dějiny tělocvičné jednoty Sokol v Londýně : o předběžným pojednáním o minulých spolcích londýnských (Prague, 1912), RB.23.b.8302

The 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City witnessed another story of resilience and quiet protest by Provazníková’s compatriot, Věra Čáslavská. The Czech gymnast became a symbol of defiance against Soviet oppression. Following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, Čáslavská faced many challenges. Her training facilities were seized, forcing her to improvise her regimen in the forests of the Hrubý Jeseník mountains: she lifted potato sacks for weights and balanced on logs as beams, trying to maintain her peak condition. 

Cover of Vratislav Blažek, Věra Čáslavska. (Prague, 1968), X.441/1143

An outspoken critic of Communism, during Prague Spring, Věra signed the ‘Two Thousand Words’ manifesto protesting the Warsaw Pact troops’ invasion of Czechoslovakia. This act of defiance forced her into hiding in a remote mountain hut at Vřesová studánka, only securing her passage to the Olympics at the last moment. Despite everything, Čáslavská dominated the 1968 Olympics, winning medals in all six events.

Čáslavská's achievements were particularly poignant because of the political turmoil in Czechoslovakia. During the medal ceremonies, she protested the occupation with a symbolic gesture while standing on the podium alongside a Soviet competitor: she turned her head away and looked down while the USSR’s anthem was playing, showing her defiance against Soviet politics. Věra’s was not the only act of defiance in Mexico, with Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s black power salute from the podium being one of the most iconic images engraved in history.

Cover of Harry Blustein, Games of discontent: protests, boycotts, and politics at the 1968 Mexico Olympics (Montreal; Kingston; London; Chicago 2021), YC.2022.a.5826.

After the Velvet Revolution, Čáslavská became an advisor to President Václav Havel and the chairwoman of the Czechoslovak and later the Czech Olympic Committee, further solidifying her legacy as both a sports icon and a symbol of resistance.

The Olympic Games have long been a stage for athletes to promote democratic values and protest oppressive regimes. Although officially Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas,” the Games highlight the power of sports as a platform for advocating democracy and human rights. In Beijing in 2022, just before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Vladyslav Heraskevych flashed a blue-and-yellow sign reading “No War in Ukraine” after competing in a skeleton race for his country. Although the Games are apolitical in principle, the Olympic spirit goes beyond competition and includes a commitment to global justice and freedom. 

Olga Topol, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections, with thanks to Richard Morel, Curator Philatelic Collections

Further reading:

‘Ord om frihet. Två dokument från Tjeckoslovakiens folk. Två tusen ord och Medborgarnas budskap’ = ‘Dva tisíce slov.-Poselství občanů předsednictvu ústředního výboru komunistické strany’ (translation: Eva Lindekrantz and Ulla Keyling), in: Literarní Listy: týdenník věnovaný literatuře, uměni, poučení a zábavě. Redaktorové: F. Schulz a ... E. Grégr, no 1-3. (Gothenburg, 1968) X.708/6288

Josef Kučera, Dějiny tělocvičné jednoty Sokol v Londýně: o předběžným pojednáním o minulých spolcích londýnských, Praha 1912. RB.23.b.8302

International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter (Lausanne?, 1991) 6256.404730

As we know, Russian and Belarusian athletes will not take part in the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris. The International Olympic Committee has banned athletes from both countries following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Nevertheless, some sportsmen from Russia and Belarus have been allowed to compete as AINs (Individual Neutral Athletes). Unfortunately, totalitarian regimes weaponise sports and international competitions to promote their own narrative of superiority and success. At the end of the blog, I will offer several titles that might be of interest to those readers who would like to learn more about the research in sports, politics and society in Belarus and beyond. Before that, however, I would like to relive the best moments associated with sports in Belarus and find out more about the individuals linked to the Belarusian land who made lasting contributions to the Olympic movement.

The first person I would like to mention was not a sportsman but an engineer - Zygmunt Mineyko (Greek: Ζigkmοynt Μineiko). A Polish-Lithuanian nobleman, born as a Russian Imperial subject in the territory of present-day Belarus, he lived and worked in France and the Ottoman Empire and then settled in Greece. Mineyko was imprisoned and sent to Siberia for fighting for Polish independence in the 1863 January Uprising. He later wrote a book about these years, From the Taiga to the Acropolis.

Zygmunt Mineyko, Z tajgi pod Akropol: Wspomnienia z lat 1848-1866. (Warsaw, 1971) X.808/7446.

Mineyko was born in the region of Hrodna, which later became one of the major centres of Belarusian sports. After moving to Greece, he served as a chief engineer for the country's Public Work Ministry and took part in constructing the Olympic facilities for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. He was one of the engineers responsible for restoring and refurbishing the Panathenaic Stadium, which hosted the Games that year.

Panathenaic Stadium. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

In 1888, three years before Mineyko settled in Athens, another man destined to leave a mark on the history of the Olympic Games was born in Hrodna. Karol Rómmel (Russian: Karl Rummel, German: Karol von Rummel) was the son of the Russian Imperial Army general Karol Aleksander Rummel. He followed in his father's footsteps and joined the ranks of the Russian Army. Karol studied in Odesa and Saint Petersburg and soon became interested in equestrian sports. He took part in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm as a member of the Russian team.

Report on the Olympic Games published in the magazine Russkii sport. 1912, No 28 (8 July). P. 7. Digital copy of the Russian State Historical Public Library

The above report mentions the results but does not tell the dramatic story behind Rómmel’s Olympic performance. Almost at the end of the track, his horse Ziablik caught a beam and fell, crushing his rider. Despite the serious injuries, the sportsman managed to get back into the saddle and finish the race.

The section on Riding Competitions from The Olympic Games of Stockholm 1912 Official Report. (Stockholm, 1913) 7904.e.2. Available online via the Digital Olympic Official Reports Collection.

After the Russian Revolution, the athlete changed his surname from Rummel to the more Polish-sounding Rómmel and joined the Polish Army in its fight against Bolshevik Russia. The next Olympic Games he participated in were held in Paris (1924) and Amsterdam (1928), where he, together with Józef Piotr Trenkwald and Michał Antoniewicz, claimed the bronze for Poland in team competitions.

Photograph of K. Rómmel from The Olympic Games of Amsterdam 1928 Official Report accessible at
 Digital Olympic Official Reports Collection

The first Olympic medal for Belarusians —  as part of the USSR team — was silver, awarded in 1956 to hammer thrower Mikhail Krivonosov (1929-1994). In 1976, Elena Novikova-Belova (b. 1947) became the first female fencer to win four Olympic gold medals. Although born in Khabarovsk Krai in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, she spent much of her career in Belarus and became the Honoured Trainer of Belarus in 1994. A native of Minsk, Sviatlana Bahinskaia (b. 1973, lives in the USA) is one of the few world-class gymnasts who competed in three Olympic Games. She was a member of three Olympic teams: USSR (1992, Seoul), The Unified Team of former Soviet republics (1992, Barcelona) and Belarus (1996, Atlanta). The first gold Olympic medal for independent Belarus was won in rowing by Katsiaryna Khadatovich-Karsten (b. 1972, lives in Germany). She is a two-time Olympic and six-time World Champion in the single scull.

But of course, the legend of Soviet Belarusian sports was Olga Korbut, born in Hrodna in 1955. Although her professional career in sports lasted only for eight years, as she retired from gymnastic competition at the age of 22, Korbut’s influence and legacy have been profound. The hero of Soviet and Belarusian sports is now a US national. She left Minsk in 1991 and has lived in the USA for almost as long as in the Soviet Union. Although much research has already been done on the Korbut phenomenon, she remains the focus of academic projects. As Timur Mukhamatulin concluded in his article on women’s gymnastics and the Cold War, “Korbut’s image was so influential for American sports followers that, in 1994, long after she had retired, and in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Sports Illustrated included Korbut in its list of forty athletes who had altered sports over the course of the magazine’s forty years of existence. An article honouring Korbut declared that ‘this little Russian girl’ put a ‘different, human face on her Communist country.’”

Olga Korbut at the 1972 Olympics on an Azerbaijani stamp (Image from Wikipedia)

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator, East European Collections

Further reading:

[Please note that because of the recent cyberattack on the British Library, not all titles are currently available in our reading rooms. The BL is working hard to restore access, and you can find information and updates here] 

Sport and international politics: [the impact of fascism and communism on sport], edited by Pierre Arnaud and James Riordan. (London, 1997) ELD.DS.22220

Sport, Culture, and Ideology, edited by Jennifer Hargreaves. (London, 2014) X.529/52184

George Harvey Sage, Globalizing Sport: How Organizations, Corporations, Media, and Politics are Changing Sports. ([London], 2015) ELD.DS.41952

Race, Gender and Sport: the Politics of Ethnic Minority Girls and Women, edited by Aarti Ratna, Samaya F. Samie. (London, 2017) ELD.DS.186619

Aristea Papanicolaou-Christensen, The Panathenaic Stadium: its History over the Centuries. (Athens, 2003)

Londa Jacobs. Olga Korbut: Tears and Triumph. ([S.l., 1974) 81/5549

Justin Beecham, Olga: Her Life and her Gymnastics ... With photographs by Alan Baker and others, and illustrations by Paul Buckle (New York, [1974]) X.611/3888

‘Olga Korbut and the Munich Olympics of 1972’, in Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies, ed. by Annette Vowinckel, Marcus M. Payk, Thomas Lindenberger (New York, [2012]) YC.2013.a.328, Chapter 5

Timur Mukhamatulin, Women’s Gymnastics and the Cold War: How Soviet Smiles Won Over the West. Jordan Centre Blog, published on 16 February 2023

Rebekka Lang Fuentes, Olympism and Human Rights: A Critical Analysis Comparing Different National Olympic Education Programmes in Europe. (Wiesbaden, 2022) Online resource (subscription only)

Aka Morchiladze is a widely recognised and much-loved writer from Georgia. He has authored some best-selling novels, and a series of short stories and essays mainly concerned with Georgian history and literature. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature this year for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to Georgian literature.

Morchiladze has an incredible ability to tell a story and bring the reader into his world, always engaging with new themes, new areas of experience, and, above all, new technical challenges.  He tells stories from the point of view of an outsider, but he sees the world as one of  his characters might see it. He pays thorough attention to the distinctiveness of the speech of each character.  His stories with a wide variety of voices are emotional, subtle and complex, sometimes even grotesque.

His writing technique allows mixed perception of the text: a literary text can be perceived on various levels. For some readers, it could be simply a detective story. For others, a narrative full of unique historical details, the picture of a particular era. Moreover, it could be the contemplation of the differences between past and present, the relationship and interdependence of history and memory, history and mentality, and their roles in culture. In manipulating a continuous parallel between past and present, modernity and antiquity, he uses stories and themes from Classical literature and places them in a modern context and circumstances.

Morchiladze has won a number of literary prizes in Georgia. His works have been translated and published in several countries, including Germany, Italy, Serbia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Egypt, USA, Sweden, Azerbaijan and Switzerland. 

His two novels, Journey to Karabakh and Of Old Hearts and Swords, have been translated into English by Elizabeth Heighway.  

His first novel, Journey to Karabakh (მოგზაურობა ყარაბაღში), was published in Georgia in 1992 and brought him immediate success. The novel depicts events in Georgia and the Caucasus, which took place at the beginning of the 1990s. It tells of an adventure of two young Georgians who accidentally get involved in the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Cover of Elizabeth Heighway's translation of Journey to Karabakh. H.2016/.7513

Of Old Hearts and Swords (ძველი გულებისა და ხმლისა) was published in 2007. It is a novel about nineteenth-century Georgia, re-creating the atmosphere of a culture almost lost in time. Its themes are loyalty and courage, love, friendship and war. It narrates the story of a Georgian nobleman who travels from Tbilisi to the West in search of his missing brother.

 

Cover Of Old Hearts and Swords in Georgian. YF.2008.a.20364

Morchiladze’s work Georgian Notebooks (ქართულის რვეულები) (2013) has recently been translated into English. It was published in 2022 with the title Character in Georgia. The book is a collection of stories about poets, politicians, outlaws and many other Georgians. Their personalities are different, and yet, symbolising Georgian character, they have something in common. Living in the pages of this book, they follow their unique way of behaving. Their inner lives collide with real events and become the stuff of history and legend.

The English edition (Character in Georgia), unlike the Georgian original, provides more information and context around the events and people, presenting and explaining stories for non-Georgian readers. This new approach to the original text was suggested by the English editor, Peter Nasmyth. It was finally decided to put both writers’ names on the title page.

 

Cover of Character in Georgia (awaiting shelfmark)

The British Library’s collections hold most of Morchiladze’s works, including his best novels mentioned above, as well as English translations. On several occasions, he has been invited to the British Library as a speaker and talked about Georgian literature. We look forward to seeing him at a future European Writers' Festival.

Anna Chelidze, Curator, Georgian Collections

References:

Donald Rayfield, Georgian literature in Encyclopædia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/art/Georgian-literature/The-20th-century 

Donald Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia: History (London: Garnett Press, 2010). 

The Endangered Archives Programme project on Bulgarian minorities’ culture in the 20th century has created a digital archive which documents the traditions and customs of minority communities in Bulgaria.

Karakachan family in front of their 'Kaliva' thatched winter cabins in Karnobat region, Bulgaria. 1950. EAP500/1/1/2.

The objective of the project was to improve the accessibility and exposure of this digital archive to a wider audience of researchers and stakeholders.

A Tatar-Turkish family celebrates the national holiday May Day in pre-1989 Bulgaria on the 1st of May in their village of Vardim, located in the Svishtov region in 1957. Their daughter, looking on and dressed as a young pioneer in a red scarf, represents a new generation of Bulgarian people. EAP500/13/3/1.

The project focused on various ethnic and religious communities in Bulgaria, including Turks, Tatars, Pomaks, Jews, Armenians, Old Believers, Alevis, Aromanians, Karakachans, and Vlachs. This project continues the work initiated in the previous project, which was smaller in its scope.

Turkish families celebrate the holiday of ‘Trifon Zarezan’, also known as the holiday of the grapes and wine. 1967. EAP500/13/3/11.

The captured documents serve as valuable sources of information regarding the cultures and traditions of the Bulgarian minority communities, which were often obscure beyond the confines of their respective regions.

Turkish women during grape harvest in the village of Novgrad (mixed Bulgarian-Turkish village) in Svishtov region. 1963. EAP500/13/3/17.

The project’s investigations have uncovered these images in private and local government collections. The project established that local archives didn’t hold these types of records. This deficiency primarily stemmed from the mono-centric state policy, which historically prioritised Bulgarian ethnic tradition and culture to the exclusion of minority groups.

Traditional Turkish dresses presented by Turkish women part of the Turkish group ‘Berlik’. 1950s. EAP500/13/3/122.

These communities, both geographically and culturally isolated, frequently experienced marginalisation from mainstream Bulgarian society. Despite this, they continued to preserve numerous traditional elements of their culture, which are passed down through generations.

Karakachans' costumes in everyday life and festive tradition in Karnobat region, Southeast Bulgaria, during the 1950s through to the 1980s period. EAP500/3/1.

The project has surveyed underexplored and little-known aspects of the lifestyles, customs, and rituals of minority groups in Bulgaria. Many of these elements hold significant research value as they retain pre-industrial characteristics, often maintained and practised clandestinely during the socialist era in Bulgaria.

The photo presents Armenian tobacco workers from Haskovo city. 1930. EAP675/9/1/25.

Russian Old Believers and their guests from Romania in Kazashko village. 1950s. EAP675/26/1/45.

Alevi dancers in traditional costumes from Yablanovo village. 1970s. EAP675/1/1/13.

The geographic and cultural isolation experienced by these groups, who remained largely unaffected by modern influences, often resulted in their exclusion from mainstream Bulgarian society. Regardless of this, these communities diligently preserved numerous traditional elements of their culture, which have persistently endured and been passed down from one generation to the next.

In Medovets, a Turkish wedding unfolds as the bride and groom patiently await at the table to receive congratulations, gifts, and monetary blessings from the wedding guests. 1980s. EAP500/12/1/269.

The bride departs for her new home accompanied by her trousseau. 1970s. EAP675/7/1/49.

The project concluded that, prior to 1989, Bulgarian state policies were actively geared towards the forced assimilation of minorities. As a result, the project states, there has been a gradual erosion or deliberate destruction of photographs and photographic collections belonging to various minority communities, with a particular impact on the Muslim minority during the "Revival process" in Bulgaria from the 1960s to the 1980s.

During this period, the Bulgarian state implemented a policy of forced assimilation targeting Muslims, involving the destruction of all official, personal, and family documents verifying their minority identity. Despite these repressive measures and deliberate destruction of archival materials, the project reveals that many documents were covertly preserved, although frequently under unfavourable conditions and in a deteriorated state.

The first public Evangelical protest by Protestants from different parts and churches of Bulgaria for the free manifestation of religion and religious practices in South Park in Sofia. One placard reads: “We want the Nativity of Christ and Easter as public holidays.” 1989. EAP675/47/1/62.

The photo presents Pomak traditional women's costumes from Yagodina village at the local folklore fair. 1970s-1980s. EAP675/46/1/52.  

The project has digitised documents that serve as invaluable sources of information about the cultures and traditions of these minority communities, which often remain scarcely known beyond the confines of their respective regions. The digitised copies of the material have been deposited in the Studii Romani Archive at the Institute of Ethnology and Folkloristic Studies and the Ethnographical Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. The British Library also holds a digital copy of this valuable material.

Milan Grba, Lead Curator South-East European Collections

Ismail Kadare, the best-known contemporary Albanian writer and intellectual, one of the most remarkable European authors of his generation, died on 1 July 2024 at the age of 88.

Ismail Kadare (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

By coincidence, the news about Kadare’s death came when I was reading his novel Broken April (1978) about the moral responsibilities of intellectuals: “Your books, your art, they all smell of murder [...] you look here for beauty so as to deed your art. You don’t see that this is beauty that kills [...]”.

Cover of Ismail Kadare's Broken April (London, 1990) Nov.1990/1482

Kadare’s body of work consists of over 80 titles translated into 45 languages. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 15 times and received numerous awards. However, my personal encounter with the author happened quite late in my life. I learned about him first in 2016 from the blog post by Christina Pribichevich Zorić, the former Chief of Conference and Language Services at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. But it was not until I got stuck for over six hours at Tirana International Airport, waiting for my flight to London and having plenty of time to read, that I finally had a chance to savour the mastery of his literary genres, narratives, themes and literary devices. The range of his works available in all major European languages at a small airport bookshop was impressive, and I ended up buying several of his books.

All of Kadare’s novels create imaginary worlds out of a wide variety of myths, legends (The Three Arched Bridge), and stories of the distant past (The Castle). He worked with political parables and satire (The Concert), antitotalitarian dystopias (The Palace of Dreams), offering commentary on the recent history (The General of the Dead Army, Broken April) and openly criticising Hoxha’s dictatorship and the regime that immediately succeeded it (Agamemnon's Daughter, The Successor). Having studied in the Soviet Union just before Albania's breaking of political and economic ties with the USSR, Kadare wrote a book of memoirs about his time in Moscow in the late 1950s in the style of political satire (Twilight of the Eastern Gods). His last novel, The Doll (2015, English translation – 2020), is also a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story. Whenever he wrote, he would always write about his beloved Albania. As he put it in one of his poems: “Me ka marre malli per Shqiperine tone” (“I was filled with longing for Albania”, translated by Robert Elsie).

Kadare, like the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha 28 years before him, was born in the museum-like town of Gjirokastër. Looking at the photo below, it is strange to think how Good and Evil could come from one place.

The city of Gjirokastër in Albania (Photograph by Katya Rogatchevskaia)

The earliest book by Kadare that I found in the British Library collections was his poem The Princess Argjiro, published first in Tirana in 1958 and later in 1967.

Cover of Princesha Argjiro. (Tirana, 1967). Shelfmark X.950/15359

Page from Princesha Argjiro by Ismail Kadare

Based on a 15th-century local legend, the poem tells the story of a young princess who jumped with her child off the walls of the Gjirokastër Castle to avoid captivity by the Ottomans. As the spirit and message of the poem were not in line with the conventions of socialist realism and the Communist Party of Albania’s interpretation of the country’s history, the work was denounced, and Kadare was criticised for not following socialist literary principles.

The Gjirokastër Castle (Photograph by Katya Rogatchevskaia)

But this was only the beginning of Kadare’s opposition to the political and aesthetic tenets of the Albanian dictatorship. Influenced by Kafka, Gogol, Sartre, Camus, Orwell and other writers and thinkers, he kept writing books that were banned, criticised and censored, while the author himself was once nearly shot. His international fame saved him many times, but even after Hoxha’s death, he had to flee from Albania and seek refuge in France in 1990 after criticising the new government. He later returned to Tirana and continued writing. Like Vaclav Havel, Kadare was invited by his people to become president, but unlike Havel, he declined.

The search on Kadare as an ‘author’ yields 257 entries in the British Library catalogue – we hold his books in Albanian, English, French, German, Bulgarian, Polish, Dutch, Romanian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and even Arabic.

Whether you are a devoted admirer of Kadare’s work or you are just at the beginning of your journey into his wonderful but challenging world, I would like to leave you with the author's reading of his 1961 poem Edhe Kur Kujtesa (And when my memory).

Ndarja erdhi,
Po iki larg prej teje.
Asgjë e jashtëzakonshme,
Veç ndonjë natë
Gishtat e dikujt do pleksen në flokët e tu
Me të largëtit gishtat e mi, me kilometra të gjatë.

The division came
I'm leaving you ...
Nothing extraordinary,
Except for one night
Someone's fingers will curl into your hair
With my fingers far, miles long ...

C'est l'heure de se séparer.
Je vais m'en aller loin de toi.
Rien là qui puisse étonner.
Pourtant, une autre nuit, les doigts
d'un autre dans tes cheveux viendront
s'entrelacer aux miens, mes doigts
de milliers de kilomètres de long.

Anthology of Modern Albanian Poetry, edited and translated by Robert Elsie (London: Forest Books, 1996)

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator, East European Collections

Further reading:

Ismail Kadare obituary. The Guardian, 1 July 2024 

Peter Morgan. Ismail Kadare: the writer and the dictatorship, 1957-1990. (London, 2010) YC.2011.b.13

Ariane Eissen. Visages d'Ismail Kadaré. (Paris, [2015]) YF.2021.a.16497

Alessandro Scarsella, Giuseppina Turano. Leggere Kadare : critica, ricezione, bibliografia. (Milan, 2008) YF.2015.a.12980

Kadare dhe regjimi komunist : 101 dokumente nga aparati diktatorial shtetëror 1959-1991, compiled by Dashnor Kaloçi. (Tirana, 2018) YF.2021.a.11094

This year, I have been nominated as a judge for the Premio Strega 2024, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize. I had just over six weeks to read the dozzina, the best 12 books published in Italy in the past year, and help choose the winner.

12 books nominated for this year's Premio Strega Prize (Image from https://www.illibraio.it/)

On April 15, I received the link to download the books and felt immediately overwhelmed by the task. First to attract my attention was Valentina Mira, partly for the semi-homonymy with yours truly, but also because her both personal and political story Dalla stessa parte mi troverai had been accused of revisionism. 

Personal, almost biographical narratives feature heavily in this year’s dozzina. Melissa Panarello in Storia dei miei solid, mixes the story of her early literary fame with women’s taboo relation with money. Tommaso Giartosio astonishes with Autobiogrammatica, a bildungsroman and memoir about his relationship with language and a tribute to the 1963 Premio Strega winner, Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico Famigliare (first Italian edition at 10765.k.23., English translation, Family Sayings, YC.1987.a.5661). The most personal and brave of all is Antonella Lattanzi, who in Cose che non si raccontano tells her cruel story of missed maternity with unapologetic honesty; a cathartic act to raise awareness in hope to help all women. I hope this book will be translated into English very soon.

Part family history, part essay, Daniele Rielli’s Il fuoco invisibile. Storia umana di un disastro naturale is a blend of many genres. It is a choral novel with Puglia’s millenary olive trees threatened by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa as its protagonists. 

Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s L’età fragile is the favourite for this year. Like her last success, L’Arminuta, 2017 (first Italian edition at YF.2019.a.15048, English translation by Ann Goldstein, A Girl Returned, at ELD.DS.428465), this book talks about the relationship between mother and daughter and is set in her native region of Abruzzo, in a very rural environment which is echoed by her dry and simple writing style.

These works give a fantastic overview of the state of the art of Italian narrative and of the literary genres that evolve and intermix. They show an ageing country deeply affected by climate change, with younger generations abandoning the province and women and LGBTQ+ people fighting for their rights and their freedom. They tell of strong ancestral bonds and a passion for the Italian language and culture.

The winner will be announced on July 4, chosen by 700 jurors, 245 of which were nominated by the Italian Cultural Institutes worldwide for their interest in Italian language and literature.

Premio Strega was established in 1947, and among its winners are some of the best-known works of contemporary literature, such as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) (1959) and Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) (1981). Awarded authors include Cesare Pavese (1950), Alberto Moravia (1952), Elsa Morante (1957), Alessandro Barbero (1986), Antonio Pennacchi (2010), and Sandro Veronesi (2020).

Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections