ALBANIAN LIBRARY

This is a brief annotated bibliography containing some of the books on Albania, which I have enhoyed reading. It is by no means comprehensive. I have arranged them in order of date of publication.

Durham, M.E.: “High Albania”, publ. Edward Arnold (London) 1909.

Margaret Durham was an anthropologist who fell in love with the Balkans. This describes in great detail the history and anthropology of the tribes living in the remote mountains of northern Albania. There are modern editions of this beautifully written and illustrated classic available.

Peacock, W.: “Albania: The Foundling State of Europe”, publ. Chapman & Hall (London), 1914.

This is a fascinating, detailed account of life in and around Shkodër during the first years of Albanian independence. The author was attached to the British Consulate in Shkodër. His chapter on the future of Albania makes for interesting reading in the light of what actually happened.

Gordon, J & Gordon, C.: “Two vagabonds in Albania”, publ. John Lane The Bodley Head (London), 1927.

Jan and Cora Gordon wrote a large number of “Two Vagabonds in…” travelogues. This one, which describes their trip to Albania, is beautifully illustrated with the authors’ line drawings and chalk sketches. The text is humorous and informative.

Bridge, A.: “Singing Waters”, publ. Macmillan (New York), 1946.

Not quite as good as Bridge’s “Illyrian Spring”, her superb novel set in the Balkans, “Singing Waters” is set largely in Albania.

Muggeridge, M. (ed.): “Ciano’s Diary: 1939 -1943”, publ. William Heinemann (London), 1947.

                This is a translation of Count Ciano’s secret diary, which was smuggled out of Italy by Ciano’s wife at the end of WW2. According to Mosely, who wrote a biography of Ciano, this is a largely accurate account of the events described in the diary. The first chapter of the diary describes the vents leading up to the Italian invasion of Albania.

Buda, A., Cun, J., Rrok, Z., & Skënder, A.: “Guide d’Albanie”, publ. by Editions “Albturist” (Tirana), 1958.

Difficult to obtain, this guide produced whilst the Albanians were still allies of the Soviet Union is remarkably detailed. The historical section ends with an affirmation of the country’s alliance with the Soviet Union, ‘… le grand sauveur et défenseur de notre people.”

Hamm, H.:  “Albania - China’s beachhead in Europe”, publ. Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London), 1963.

Harry Hamm was a German journalist who was allowed to visit Albania in 1962. He was the first western journalist to visit the country since 1957. He arrived just after the Albanians had divorced themselves from the Soviet Union. He describes this break up between former allies in great detail. He also foretells the alliance of Albania and the People’s Republic of China, which began soon after his visit. Hard to find, this is a fascinating book.

Logoreci, A.: “The Albanians”, publ. Westview Press (Colorado), 1977.

Published just after the death of Mao Tse Tung, this scholarly but readable book gives many interesting insights about the political, social, and economic conditions prevailing in Hoxha’s Albania. He predicts the rift that developed between China and Albania not long after Mao’s death. The book ends with a comprehensive reading list over five pages in length.

Kadare, I.: “Broken April”. First published in 1978, numerous editions are available. 

This haunting tale, which revolves around the Law of Lek, the codification of feuding in traditional Albania, is a brief but brilliant story about the last days of a young man expecting to be killed in an inter-familial vendetta. As in his other works, Ismail Kadare captures a great deal with a few words.

Ward, P.: “Albania”, publ. Oleander Press (Cambridge), 1983.

The author describes his trip to Albania and uses it as the framework for his informative illustrated guidebook. It is the most interesting guidebook to the country that I have come across.

Halliday, J.: “The Artful Albanian”, publ. Chatto & Windus, 1986.

                This book contains a number of extracts from the voluminous writings of Enver Hoxha and interesting commentaries about them. I lent my copy to one of the people with whom I travelled to Albania, and she never returned it. If she is reading this now, I ask her to return it immediately.

Robyns, G.: “Geraldine of the Albanians: The Authorised Biography”, publ. Frederick Muller Ltd, 1987.

This true-life Mills and Boon tale, a biography of King Zog’s Hungarian wife, was written by Barbara Cartland’s biographer. It includes a description of Geraldine whimpering into her pillow on being deflowered.

Jones, L.: “Biografi”, publ. André Deutsch, 1993.

                This curious tale about the fate of one of Enver Hoxha’s doubles in post-communist Albania contains good descriptions of conditions in the country soon after the end of communist rule.

Pettifer, J.: “Blue Guide: Albania”, publ. A&C Black (London), 1994.

 Published soon after Albania shed its communist regime, this detailed guidebook does its best in his section on ‘Personal Security’ to portray Albania as a lawless place, to which only the foolhardy visitor should stray. This book provides an encyclopaedic account of Albania and her people.

Mosely, R.: “Mussolini’s Shadow”, publ. Yale University Press (New Haven), 1999.

This detailed biography of Count Ciano, Mussolini’s foreign minister and son-in-law contains a chapter on the Italian involvement in in Albania during WW2.

Kadare, I.: “The Successor”, published in 2003.

This chilling tale, which explores the mysterious death of the successor to a political leader, is most probably based on the sudden death of Enver Hoxha’s right hand man and probable successor Mehmet Shehu.

Tomes, J.: “King Zog: Self-made monarch of Albania”, publ. Sutton (Stroud, Gloucestershire), 2003.

This well-written, interestingly detailed account of Zog’s life in Albania, and then later in exile, includes a chapter about the Western Allies attempts to wrest Albania from the Communists in the 1950s.

Kadare, I.: “The Accident: a novel”, first published in 2009.

This recent novel by world famous author Ismail Kadare concerns the investigation of a mysterious traffic accident near to Vienna’s airport. This story does not make for easy reading. It is deliberately confusing. I suspect that it gives the reader a good insight into the tortuous thought processes that were needed to survive in the oppressive atmosphere that was inspired by Albania's long serving dictator Enver Hoxha.  

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BROWSING IN BANGALORE PART 2

 Bookworm, looking outwards

This is a continuation of the article, which begins here .

There are two shops close to where Premier used to be, which help to make up for the loss of this great bookshop: Blossom Book House and Bookworm.

Blossom Book House is located on Church Street, and its entrance is reached by a short flight of steps. on the ground floor there are some new, and recently published volumes, and also a jumble of used books, mostly non-fiction.

A short staircase leads to the first floor, which is dedicated to fiction, mostly used (second-hand). Some of the books may have been in the rows of shelves for so long that they now look used. The corridors between the parallel bookshelves are so narrow, that browsing becomes quite an intimate affair. The majority of books are paperback editions, and the number of authors, both Indian and foreign, available is amazingly huge. The arrangement of the books defies my comprehension,  but the helpful assistants are usually able to direct you to approximately where the author you are seeking might be located. Sometimes, even they are defeated!

Whilst one misses the exceptional helpfulness and understanding of Premier's Mr Shanbag, Blossom certainly rates amongst my favourite bookshops, not only in Bangalore, but also worldwide.

Bookworm in Shrungar Complex

A short staircase located next to a cigarette seller leads from Church Street into Shrungar Complex, whose main entrance is on MG Road. The Shrungar shopping complex consist of a large circular building surrounded by a circular roadway that links by means of a small straight section to MG Road. Bookworm is located in the part of the central circular edifice that partially faces MG Road. Because of the circular nature of the building, the shelves in Bookworm radiate out from the back, interior, wall of the shop like the spokes of a wheel.

The entrance of the shop and its display window are dedicated to the display of recently published books and popular titles. One side of one of the spoke-like shelves contains a good selection of new copies literature, both Indian and otherwise, all in paperback. As with Blossom, all prices for new books are discounted in comparison with what you would have to pay in, for example, Gangarams or Higginbothams. 

The remainder of the shop stocks a wonderful selection of used books. If you are unable to find what you are seeking, the helpful owner and his assistants will ring through to their other branch in a lane off Brigade Road (the same lane in which Select Books, an antiquarian bookseller, which I do not like, can be found). If the book is there, you will be invited to wait for 'five minutes' whilst someone brings the book over to the Shrungar branch. 

In addition to finding a whole host of books that are not particularly rare, Bookworm has come up with trumps when I have sought several rare editions. For example, they sold me a copy of Fazlul Hasan's 1970 history of Bangalore, which is scarcely available in the second-hand market. In a recent search of the extremely comprehensive     www.bookfinder.com, I found no copies listed for sale. Also, to my amazement, they were able to find a copy of a book about Muslim architecture in Calicut (Kozhikode), which I had read about while visiting this fascinating city in Kerala.

So, between Blossom and Bookworm, the serious book-lover in Bangalore is well catered for. They are located close to each other, and to another one of my favourite haunts in the MG Road area, the relocated Indian Coffee House. Formerly in MG Road close to the entrance to the Shrungar Complex, it has now relocated to a building almost opposite Shrungar in Church Street. I cannot recommend this place for its watery coffee, but it is a remnant of old Bangalore. The waiters, dressed in turbans and outfits that don't seem to have been washed for years serve tiny cups of coffee for tiny amounts of money in a simple but evocative ambience. What could be better than quenching one's thirst after a tiring bout of book browsing?

BROWSING IN BANGALORE PART 1

Interior of Bookworm

I first visited Bangalore (in the south of India) early in 1994 in order to get married. Our marriage ceremony was held at my in-laws' home in Koramangala, a suburb about 8 Km south of the city centre. After the celebrations were over, we used to make occasional trips into town, often visiting the area around Mahatma Gandhi ('MG') Road. It was during these excursions that I first discovered the delights of Indian bookshops.

The attractions of these shops were two-fold. Firstly, they offered a greater variety of books (in English) than comparably sized bookshops in the UK. Secondly, books in India were, and still are, cheaper than in the UK. There are at least two reasons for this. One reason is that the prices of books published in India and Indian editions of books, which were originally published elsewhere, are lower than similar books in the UK. Another reason is the existence of what appears to be a literary rate of exchange for imported books. If, for example, the UK Pound is worth 80 Indian Rupees at the bank, it is valued , say for the sake of illustration, at 50 Rupees by Indian book distributors. So, the same book that sells for 20 Pounds in the UK will be sold for 1000 Rupees in India, thus reducing its cost to about 12 Pounds Sterling. This special 'literary' rate of exchange exists, I believe, to make imported titles more affordable to the vast number English readers in India.

The better known bookshops in Bangalore include: Higginbothams and Gangarams in MG ROad; Sapna in various locations around the city; Crossword in Residency Road; and various branches of chain stores in the some of the American-style shopping malls that are springing up in the city like fungi after a rainstorm. These stores, which are mostly well-stocked (especially Gangarams), are of less interest to me than the more individualistic establishments, which I am about to describe. 

A year or two after my first visit to Bangalore, a branch of the well-known Bombay bookshop, Strand Bookstall, was opened in the Manipal Centre, which stands at the eastern end of the military parade grounds that line the north side of MG Road. It is run by the daughter of the founder of the bookshop in Bombay, and offers a wide selection of new (as opposed to used) books at often ridiculously low prices. There are piles of books on the floor and on the shelves lining the walls of the low-ceilinged bookshop.  It is always worth visiting Strand, but you may not always find what you are looking for, but that could be said for any bookshop! Once a year, the shop closes for a few days in order to host an enormous sale in one of the city's larger exhibition halls.

Premier seen from its entrance

Premier, one of the most fantastic bookshops that has ever existed is no more. It closed one or two years ago when its owner, Mr Shanbag, retired. I felt almost as if I had suffered a bereavement when I arrived where the shop used to be located on the short stretch of Museum Road between MG Road and Church Street, and found that it was there no longer. Today, the shop and its neighbours have been rebuilt, and are no longer recognisable. 

From the outside, Premier could have been mistaken for being a newsagent. A rack of magazines stood next to, and  halfway through, the shop's entrance. As soon as you stepped through the doorway, you felt as if you had entered a book lover's Aladdin's  Cave.  Mr Shanbag, who is related to the founder of Strand Bookstall in Bombay, used to sit to the left of the entrance, his back to the shop's window and hidden behind the piles of books cluttering up his tiny desk. The long rectangular shop's side walls were lined with books stacked one upon each other. A central divider was similarly covered in books. Two narrow corridors ran along the length of the shop allowing customers and staff to penetrate the dingy depths of the establishment. Deep inside the shop there was a narrow, book-lined passage way connecting the two main corridors. This was so narrow that most adults, and obese children, needed to progress along this claustrophobic alley sideways. 

In most bookshops, customers are able to pick a book from a shelf, browse it, and then replace it if it sis not wanted. This was not the case at Premier.  Only the foolhardy, or a newcomer to the shop would attempt to take a book from Premier's bookshelves. I believe that the 19th century French composer Alkan was killed when he was crushed by books collapsing on him in his library. A similar fate awaited those who attempted to casually withdraw a book from Premier's shelves. The books were stacked upon each other in this shop extremely precariously. One careless move was all that was needed to initiate an avalanche of books on the unwary customer. This often happened. Mr Shanbag would  raise an eyebrow, and then he or one of his assistants would proceed to restore 'order' in the shelves

So, you may be excused for asking, how did customers ever manage to browse in Premier? It was simple. All that was necessary was to ask Mr Shanbag or one of his helpers to retrieve the book for you. If, as was often the case, you were unable to see the book that you desired in the overwhelming morass of volumes stacked in the shop, Mr Shanbag would be able to tell you instantly whether or not he had it in stock without resorting to a computer or any form of catalogue. He knew exactly what  he had in his shop, and more remarkably where a book was located if he had it in the shop. And when you had made your selection, he would prepare a bill, and then knocked 20% off the final total, especially if you were prepared to pay in cash.

The most remarkable thing about Mr Shanbag was his great understanding of his many regular customers' reading habits. He seemed to be able to remember what each customer had bought previously, even irregular customers like myself, who only visited his shop twice a year. He used his remarkable fund of knowledge to guide his regular customers in making their next purchases. Somehow, his brain kept a pattern of each of his customers' purchasing habits, and thus created their own personal reading 'profiles'. His suggestions for purchases, based on his understanding of his customers, were rarely far off the mark. Alas, this charming genius of a bookseller has retired, leaving a great gap in Bangalore's cultural landscape. 

THIS IS CONTINUED HERE!