ALBANIA

 ALBANIA ON MY MIND

by

Adam YAMEY

“It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning”

                                                                                                            [ From The 39 Steps, JBuchan,1915]

The people of Albania achieved independence in 1913, having endured several centuries of Ottoman domination. After the First World War, they lived under a series of dictatorships beginning with that of King Zog. He was followed by Mussolini, and then by Hitler. They were ‘liberated’ by the Communist partisans at the end of the Second World War, only to be subjected to yet another dictatorship. This was led by Enver Hoxha. During his 30 year ‘reign’ Albania became even more impenetrable to outside observers than North Korea is today.

Hoxha rejected his close allies, the Soviet Union and then later the People’s Republic of China, and then tried to make his country to become self-sufficient by isolating it from the rest of the world.

In this book about Albania, published to celebrate 100 years of Albania’s independence, Adam Yamey describes how his almost obsessive interest in the country developed and what he discovered about life inside the country’s closely guarded, tightly sealed borders when he managed to visit it in 1984, the last year of Enver Hoxha’s life. 

Available on KINDLE and in paperback by clicking HERE