2 April 2009 | The novel The Siege, by Albania’s most renowned writer Ismail Kadare, is one of the six books that have been shortlisted for this year’s prestigious Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

The £10,000 (nearly 11,000 euro) prize is given each year to a living author whose book has been translated into English and published in the United Kingdom in the previous year. The winning author and translator share the prize, as a way of recognizing not just the writer but also the translator’s importance in bridging the gap between languages and cultures.

In addition to Albania, this year the shortlisted nominees come from Columbia, China, France and Isreael.

Kadare’s The Siege is competing with: The Armies by Evelio Rosero and The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, which were both translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean; Voiceover by Celine Curiol, translated by Sam Richard from the French; Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew from the Chinese; and Friendly Fire by A B Yehoshua, translated by Stuart Schoffman from the Hebrew.

“The judges have a chosen a shortlist that reflects all the diversity and depth of the global fiction that readers in this country can enjoy, and celebrates the artistry of the translators who deliver it to our doorstep,” Boyd Tonkin, literary editor of The Independent and chair of the judges, told the BBC recently.

The Siege came out in Albania in 1970, but it was only translated by David Bellos and published in English in 2008. Writing under Enver Hoxha's dictatorship, in the novel Kadare used allegories of the distant past as a way to address and discuss the present more safely.

Although it tells the story of an Albanian fortress under Ottoman siege, parallels are often made between parts of the novel which are about a past long gone with events contemporary to the time the book was written. Two examples of this are his mention of cannons, which had become so great that they risks annihilating humanity as a reference to the atomic bomb and the trade cooperation between two religiously antagonistic big powers - Venice and Ottoman Empire, which is easily transferable to the 1960s’ peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and the USA.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner will be announced on 14 May at an awards ceremony in London.

Read a review of The Siege on BalkanTravellers.com
Read more about Ismail Kadare on BalkanTravellers.com
Read more about Albania from BalkanTravellers.com