Here comes the summer! You are planning to travel this summer. In your everyday working life, it is the most fantastic and entrancing moment when you’re biting into your sandwich during your lunchtime and searching for the tourist agents. You haven’t yet decided where to go. You may go for an ancient temple in the east, a gothic castle in the west, an emerald sea in the south or even a beautiful mountain in the north. In front of your computer monitor, you’ve found the right tourist agent, but suddenly the advertisement of the tourist agent is slightly changing. All the words from the advertisement make a billowy wave that starts spinning in your mind.

Dual Mirage Part 2

Tourists Dream

Dual Mirage Part 2: Tourists Dream begins by presenting the moment when we are dreaming of travelling somewhere and what the engaging free and enchanting moment interprets in the global society. The place that we want to travel is somewhat in-between idealised and practical space, artificial and natural space. The moment longing for somewhere else other than here is as an instantaneous escape and is done in search of other utopia. It is presented as future and nostalgia. It is a mirage.

Tourists Dream also explores the mirage generated at the point at which the service industry circulates, within the ‘transitional space’. This is achieved by considering industries such as the tourism and hospitality industry, financial sector and real estate business, all of which are highly entangled with each other.

Dual Mirage Part 2  Tourists Dream Contributors: Mora Bendesky, Hyunjoo Byeon, Oksun Kim, Uin Kim, Jungmin Kwon, Eunu Lee, Jeong-Hoo Lee, Sôm Lee, Hyemin Son, Gee Song, Juhee Youn

Part 2 Event

The event of Dual Mirage Part 2 consists of the launch of the book and also the video screening. The launching of the publication of Dual Mirage Part 2: Tourists Dream will be introduced by artist Hyemin Son. It is then to be followed by the video screening Tourist’s Dream by the invited curator Hyunjoo Byeon. Both the book and the video screening share and develop the idea of transitional movement in various aspects of global society, reinforcing the theme of tourists’ dream.

Artists: Kyungah Ham, Yang Ah Ham, Stuart Hawkins, Adrian Paci, Lisl Ponger, Jaye Rhee, Hiraki Sawa, Bo Kyung Suh
Curated by Hyunjoo Byeon

Accompanied by the launch of the book Dual Mirage Part 2: Tourists Dream, the video screening Tourist’s Dream draws into varied tourists’ dreams and the underlying political, cultural and socio-economical elements that construct the migratory movements in this age of global mobility. Through the artworks by eight international artists, Tourist’s Dream navigates how global mobility transforms the way to perceive the world and expands geographies by positioning oneself in a space away from everyday life; examining also the effects it has on the diverse migratory movements in our time. In addition, it explores mirages which tourism provides by rebranding spaces in a capital-saturated society and interrogates a fantasy to consume a given culture.

The artists emerged from their common interests in the issues surrounding today’s migratory movements such as tourism, the tourist industry, territoriality, cultural identity, mobility, dislocation, migration, and global communication initiate an essential convergence in Tourist’s Dream. Kyungah Ham’s Travel & Journey (2003-05) investigates a fantasy to experience exotic cultures and cultural hierarchies in tourism by exploring the phenomenon of theme parks in Asia which replicate the symbolic monuments and landmarks of Europe and America. In her Tourism in Communism (2005), Yang Ah Ham travels to the only possible tourism area in North Korea, Mount Kumgang, developed by South Korea’s Hyundai Group. The artist depicts that tourism can be only a superficial exploration which is isolated from ordinary life, as the video was also shot on a touristic horse-drawn carriage. Stuart Hawkins playfully illustrates the artificiality of a touristic approach through her journey in search of the anthropologically perfect native CoCoMan in Souvenir (2006).

The journey reveals the pervasiveness of globalisation that is profoundly connected with the media culture, and it has caused a strange reaction in that it seeks out notions of pure cultural authenticity. Lisl Ponger´s déjà vu (1999) captures our desires for distant lands with its documentary sequences. This collective cliché of exotic otherness, combined with a series of narrations in various languages without subtitles, exposes the western-centered mode of perceiving the world and its hidden colonialism, consequently raising the awareness of our limited perception of reality. In Centro di Permanenza Temporanea (2007), which is named after an Italian refugee camp, Adrian Paci transforms an airport, a symbol of global mobility in our time, into a displaced space. A group of people standing on an aircraft boarding staircase represent migrants who are stranded “in between”, yearning for a better life, and thus an inhumane side of our ever-globalising world is revealed. Whilst Paci draws into the harsh reality of migratory movement in this age, the tiny humans and animals wandering around in the artist’s flat in Hiraki Sawa’s Migration (2003) poetically represent a restless journey in our lives and portrait our nostalgias in the global age. In Mediterranean (2009), Jaye Rhee creates her own Mediterranean setting in her studio with objects which embody images of the location of the Mediterranean. Rhee discloses how tourism and its industry construct common desires through distributing a signified image by envisaging the place with objects that can be found in daily life. In the work Citydel (2005), two separate videos parallel the passers-by looking at a girl in a bikini and a girl who enjoys her vacation on the artificial island in the Han River, which is located in the middle of Seoul. By creating a subtle rupture between them, Bo Kyung Suh questions what we dream for through traveling and where mirage exists.

Project Space 2:
Friday 6 August 2010, 6-9pm
Rivington Place
London EC2A 3BA UK

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In each of these periods parts of the world have tasted the sweetness of the fruits (abundant products and accumulation of wealth), while others have had to endure various forms of exploitation, inequality and depletion of natural resources.

Since World War II,  what is known as ‘Globalisation’ is supposed to be the result of planning by certain world leaders to eliminate borders and facilitate trade, thus creating interdependence and reducing the chances of conflict. Initially triggered through international treaties and regulations, Globalisation is assumed to function as an engine that pursues coexistence and global prosperity through free trade, exchange of technologies, people and ideas, while simultaneously diminishing the imbalance between strong nations and the so called “underdeveloped countries”.

After decades of modern Globalisation, are we on the way to achieving peaceful coexistence and true global prosperity?

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Indiegogo.com

Launched in 2008, Indiegogo is a very popular crowdfunding site that was founded by three partners: Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Each of them bring different skills to the table in terms of finance, marketing, and IT. It has seen 3,500 projects uploaded from 100 different countries around the world. So, as long as you have a bank account, you will be able to participate.

Like the majority of crowdfunding sites online, Indiegogo is free to add your proejct to, and also like a majority of the sites online, Indiegogo takes a commission from the successful site. At the time of this writing, it’s a 4% fee, so when you’re deciding on how much money you need to complete your project, add that amount into your request.

Kickstarter.com

Another very popular crowdfunding site is Kickstarter. Unlike Indiegogo, your project on Kickstarter will have a particular deadline. You have only that amount of time to collect all of the donations you’re requesting, or the project fails and you get no money at all. The upside for contributors is that their credit cards won’t be charged. The upside for the project owner is that deadlines usually help people to take action faster.

And that’s a differentiation that Kickstarter makes plain. People who donate to your crowdfunding project are not investors. They have no say in how the project goes from the time you get the funding until it is complete. They don’t get their money back for any reason, and it’s up to the person who put the crowdfunding project up to fulfill on the promises made in return for donations.

On the other hand, your project will run on Kickstarter until the dealine you set for it to be fully funded. If your project is funded early, people can still donate and you’ll end up with more than you asked for. For example, a recent project for social marketing software asked for a mere $10,000 and came away with $181,535!

International members are permitted on Kickstarter as long as they have an Amazon Payments account. The fee for a successfully funded crowdfuning project on Kickstarted is 5%.

There are also specific crowdfunding sites for people who want to do specific things. SellaBand,com is for musicians, Quirky.com is for inventors, and CreateaFund.com is for people who want to create their own crowdfunding site.

You can participate in crowdfunding on many different levels and you can get funding for just about any project you want to get funded. To learn more about any of the issues involved with crowdfunding and how it works, visit us at http://90MinuteCashAdvance.com.

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Robert McGeehan:
“You just don’t know what you’re talking about on this as well as everything else”

George Galloway:
“we’ve already worked out that I’m stupid and the 80,000 people who elect me every 4 years, they must be stupid too. We’re all out of step except Uncle Sam over here, the whole parade ground.”

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You know the guys seating atop of the balcony during the Muppet show. True legends like ‘Wrighty’, ‘Shearo’ should know better… and Gary ‘crisp’ Lineker should have moderated their outburst suggesting that Wayne ‘Rooo’ Rooney should scythe Ronaldo when they are both back in training ground at Carington is ridiculous:

1. It’s just a game
2. If W. Rooney wants to lift that cup he will have to learn one thing or two about behaving in front of millions of viewers, or embrace a Gazza-like destiny.
3. Ronaldo is a cheat…so what? Ronaldo was with Heargreaves the man of the match without a doubt. But his reaction is I’m afraid justified…although I didn’t link the wink…and the jury is still out on that one…

We all love the premier league, its swashbuckling cavalier attitude, high-tempo and that almost old-fashioned code of chivalry that really ensure that the game is played in the right mindset. But international football is not played that way. In European cups competitions, deficiencies are hidden by high-priced and high-quality foreign import both at manager and player’s level…(When was the last time an Englishman won the P-League? )
However, if we want it to continue, then we should also forget about winning anything at world cup or European level…
.If flair players like Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Maradona, Henry, …or the whole Italian team are ready to do it and actually win trophies at the highest level, then to use that code as an argument become a cope-out and nothing else…
An excuse for the looser or an item in the chicken rule book…

ou either want to win at all-cost because you are a winner or are ready to loose by your idea and principles.
In that case, no needs to build false expectations as you know roughly how it will end-up anyway…
You get me?

However, just reverse the situation one minute and have Ronaldo towering over English’s player crown jewels. Would you not react similarly if your teammate was hit so low? Club-mate or not…

ABOUT SVEN…

And the millions of excuses invented by everybody. Yes he made bad squad choices…Yes his relax approach was detrimental to the squad, with the WAGS making more headlines than the players…Physically? England lacked a second gear throughout the tournament, that’s a fact…although at ten against eleven they finished stronger than Portugal…You can’t help but still believe that physical preparation was not thorough…If you compare it to running teams like Spain, Ghana, South Korea, Germany,…Mentally? See below…Tactically? He had to make-do with his choices and cope with injuries, hence the tinkering.

ULTIMATELY…

The big players never lived up to their expectations and reputations…Rooney got a Red card…Albeit a dubious one…Lampard, Gerrard, Carragher missed penalties at a world-cup quarter finals. I had never seen that before….and that is not down to ability. Steven Gerrard almost won the C-League in 2005 on his own. As for Lampard, he is by a mile the best midfielder in the second best league in the world (After Spain’s La Ligua of course) and third RANKED FIFA’s PLAYER OF THE YEAR!

Those two ain’t no mug! And ‘Carra’ neither…
What happened then? It was all in the head. Mental preparation was lacking and mental preparation was probably ‘Big Phil’ Scolari’s first weapon. A dedicated student of Sun Tzu with the ability to show raw passion and emotion on the touchline and humble Luis Figo. The man has now entered world cup’s folklore as a touchline legend. Maybe just maybe the FA did their best move in the last five years, in trying to bring him to Soho Square. Pity it didn’t go through though…

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Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called,

Life affirming joyride anyone? Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called, Naïve Dance Masterclass by Matt Rudkin. This self-parodying theatrical treat, with the added fun of a fantastic hula-dancing doll left the audience elevated.

It really had been what it claimed, a joyride.
Afterwards I talked to Ant Hampton, eager to find out more about Rotozaza’s new show, Five in the Morning, which will soon begin a three-week run at the Bullion Room.

Tell me about the idea behind Rotozaza?
It comes on the back of three and a half years work on a particular way of making theatre, which started with Bloke. I thought if I gave an unrehearsed actor a list of instructions that you get him to agree to follow, in advance, the performer doesn’t know anything about the show but as long as they do what they are told everything will go to plan.

Why?
What’s fascinating is to see on stage a thing that develops in front of your eyes. The actor is discovering everything the same time as you. It absolutely depends for its existence on aliveness.
The performer is an audience member the same time as being an actor – breaking down that barrier?

Rather than barriers, often I see it in terms of power, I feel a lot of theatre dominates the audience, and the audience want to be dominated, whereas this sets up an equal relationship where the sympathy is high with the person on stage because they know the situation is like this.

Describe one of your shows?
ROMCOM is played with guest performers, they don’t need to be actors. We give them headphones, where they repeat the text they hear. One voice for action and a voice for movement. The text is written by Glen Neath. I wrote the actions, strategy, sound and lights. For ROMCOM we have a video with the lights and the sound and music for the show and the two ipods for the performances so we start them all together, then we sit down and watch it.

Tell me about the new show you are directing?
Five in the Morning has three people (actors, Greg McLaren, Silvia Mercuriali and Melanie Wilson) in swimming costumes, in this strange aquaworld. There are voices telling them what to do that everyone hears – the audience as well – and the quality is as if they just walked on stage and they’ve agreed to do what they’re told to do, but there’s a very mysterious feel to it, you’re constantly wondering are they rehearsed or not. The action flicks from there to very complete, very random, intensely worked theatrical images.

For example?
For example a Chinese vendor in the street illegally selling little radio controlled cars, being watched by the pope and a bunch of bodyguards in the background and he turns into an acrobat figure performing for the pope. By flicking the scenes from one to the other we try and identify two completely different ways of reading a show and particularly what happens to an audience when you are flicking between them. So the pool is where your presence in the room is very important and you have to ask yourself what you are doing watching. Within that there’s the fact that you are wondering whether or not they’re rehearsed. In a lot of our work a sort of parallel metaphor starts rising to the surface, the part of ourselves that is rehearsed and the part that is spontaneous. Are we not actually in some way completely pre-recorded? Is what we do and say really that spontaneous or not?

It’s strange how it works?
The fact that the actors are going through the same thing with the audience means these darker scenes stand as a sort of escape from this exhausting predicament.
Rotozaza worked a lot abroad, how are you finding London?
ROMCOM has had a lot of success internationally and from that we managed to set up contact for the other shows. We do different language shows, for example in Portuguese and Italian. Because of the strategies involved we can just translate and re-record. We are doing ROMCOM in Argentina at the end of March.

Why the Bullion Room?
In the hope that it might become a proper home for east London’s alternative theatre makers. It’s pretty embarrassing to have a situation in London that there is only one house for that kind of work – the BAC.

Five in the Morning will run at the Bullion Room behind the Hackney Empire from February 23 to March 12.
Hackney Empire Bullion Room Theatre
Wilton Way
London, E8 1BH
www.hackneyempire.co.uk
www.rotozaza.co.uk

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“I want you to get an interview with Mike Leigh!” The assertion in my editor’s voice told me he wasn’t kidding. I should have realised then that I was in for a rough write, but buoyed by the confidence suddenly bestowed upon me, I naively skipped out of the office, only to be met head on by lightning, thunder and an unholy summer afternoon deluge that instantly killed the spring in my step, reducing not only my soddened sneakers but my enthusiasm for this assignment into an amorphous squelching mass.

After floating down Brick Lane I washed up inside the entrance of a dimly lit bohemian café and slumping onto an overripe leather sofa, not keen to be used as a nappy, I slurped through a strong, bitter cappuccino, murdered some lung cells with a crude roll-up, assessed my thoughts and when my lights finally switched themselves back on, I’d found I’d come up against a brick wall, and a damp one at that. I don’t think being in Brick Lane had any coincidence or connection.

To what extent the sobering rain, coffee and properties of smoked tobacco leaf, helped kick-start the luminous realisation that I hadn’t a chance in HELL of getting an interview with Mike Leigh, based on what knowledge I possessed of this British auteur, I’ll never know.

But I certainly know now. “He doesn’t do interviews and has told us, even, to respect his working methods during this period. In fact, he’s not even working in any of our rehearsal spaces…etc etc,” informed one of the marketing staff at the Royal National Theatre on London’s Southbank, where Leigh will, on the 15th September, present his dramatic piece, a full length play, something he hasn’t done in more than a decade. The natural process is to request a ‘press pack’ but I didn’t feel there was any point. The piece is currently billed as A New Play (working title only) by Mike Leigh, for the Cottesloe stage.

Leigh was once quoted as saying, “As long as I’m making movies I’m very happy to have nothing to do with the theatre. I find it boring and sterile.” What has revived his interest, I wonder. Intrigue arises then for anyone who is familiar with the clandestine modus operandi of this seemingly quiet and demur man, whose award winning films usually bellow with refreshing depth and imagination that belies his seniority of 62 years; films such as Secrets and Lies, Naked and most recently Vera Drake.

Born in Salford, Lancashire in 1943, Leigh was a doctors’ son of Russian origin, whose grandfather, a miniaturist painter had the name, Lieberman who then changed it to Leigh when he emigrated in 1902. The 40′s and 50′s saw Leigh’s interest develop on a diet of Hollywood and British films, then later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (for acting studies), served his purposes, as well as the Camberwell School of Art, London International School of Film Technique, the Central School of Art and Design and experimental theatre for the BBC in 1970.

We know that the characters of his play will be well rounded, with the creation of an atmosphere that really does exist, with everything to know about the characters and their lives, the key factor to this being extensive research and improvisation.

One can only imagine the rehearsal process Leigh is subjecting his actors to at the moment. The devising of a theatrical piece, any actor will tell you, is demanding, self-sacrificing and soul stripping. Here it could both be a blessing and a curse in the hands of a great director, some say the greatest living British director, and the third greatest of all time after Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell.

The pressure must be inconceivable even for Leigh himself who has to find the strength to establish trusting relationships with each individual cast member, then intuition and navigational dexterity to guide them as a newly formed family back to shore from a monstrous sea of words and ideas laden with the sumptuous treasure of a story to tell. The cast are: John Burgess, Ben Caplan, Allan Corduner, Adam Godley, Caroline Gruber, Nitzan Sharron, Samantha Spiro, Alexis Zegerman

Past treasures include Abigail’s Party, a slice of 70′s suburban boredom, also made for TV starring Alison Steadman. Other plays include A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Smelling A Rat, Goose Pimples, Stacy, Silent Majority, Babies Grow Old and Bleak Moments. The Royal National Theatre eagerly and protectively awaits the title and production of Mike Leigh’s new play, as do we, excited by the mystery and fascination of it all. Will it cause a tempest, flooding the South Bank venue with honour or derision? Either way, more rain is coming.

And if my story seems to have an aqueous resonance to it, maybe I’m still waterlogged from the elemental deluge I encountered, but if Leigh’s work is anything to go by we are in for a treat like a good fresh bitter cappuccino, something to stir the senses and light up our conscience.

The Play runs at the Cottesloe Theatre until 31st January 2006.

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Ismail Kadare, Albanian writer of broad international reputation who has been living in France, has won the first ever Man Booker International Prize recently. He has received the prize of £60,000 and a trophy at the Award Ceremony on 27 June 2005 in Edinburgh.

Kadare was born in 1936 in Gjirokaster near the Greek border in the south of Albania. He studied first at the University of Tirana, and then in Moscow, at the Gorky Institute for World Literature, a training school for writers and critics. Returning home in 1960 after his country broke off relations with the Soviet Union, he worked first as a journalist and also published his first poems. He then wrote a short story, which he redrafted several times before it was published as his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, which made his name in Albania. He was then able to become a full-time writer. He also served as editor of a literary review, Les Lettres Albanaises, published simultaneously in Albanian and in French.

He had begun his literary career in the 1950s as a poet with verse collections such as the modest Frymezimet djaloshare (Youthful inspiration, 1954) and Enderrimet (Dreams,1957) which gave proof not only of his ‘youthful inspiration’ but also of talent and poetic originality. His influential Shekulli im (My century, 1961) helped set the pace for renewal in Albanian verse. Perse mendohen keto male (What are these mountains thinking about, 1964) is one of the clearest expressions of Albanian self-image under the gruesome years of the Hoxha dictatorship. Kadare’s poetry was less bombastic than previous verse and gained direct access to the hearts of the readers who saw in him the spirit of the times and who appreciated the diversity of his themes. He soon became widely admired among the youth of Albania for his verse. With candidness and sincerity, he contributed in particular to the evolution of love lyrics, a genre traditionally neglected in Albanian literature.

In the sixties, Kadare turned his creative energies increasingly to prose, of which he soon became the undisputed master and by far the most popular writer of the whole of Albanian literature. He was thus the most prominent representative of Albanian literature under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha and, at the same time, its most talented adversary. His works were extremely influential throughout the seventies and eighties and, for many readers, he was the only ray of hope in the prison that was communist Albania.

Kadare was granted political asylum in France in October 1990. In support of him asylum, he said, “Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible… The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.”

His years of Parisian exile have been productive and have accorded him further success and recognition, both as a writer in Albanian and in French. He has published his collected works in ten thick volumes, each in an Albanian-language and a French-language edition, and has been honoured with membership in the prestigious Académie Française.

Kadare’s works are published in France by Editions Fayard. The first eleven volumes of his Complete Works are now in print in Albanian and in French. Translations of Kadare’s novels have been published in more than forty countries and for some years Ismail Kadare has been considered as one of the greatest writers of his epoch.

He is a writer who “maps a whole culture – its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer,” said Professor John Carey, Chair of the judges. In response to winning the prize, Kadaré comments: “I am a writer from the Balkan Fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness – armed conflicts, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and so on. My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realise that this region, to which my country, Albania, belongs, can also give rise to other kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement, in the field of the arts, literature and civilisation.”

Other writers who were nominated for the International Booker Prize this year were Margaret Atwood (Canada), Saul Bellow (USA: passed away on 5 April 2005), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia), Gunter Grass (Germany), Milan Kundera (Czech), Stanislaw Lem (Poland), Doris Lessing (UK), Ian McEwan (UK), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt), Tomas Eloy Martinez (Argentina), Kenzaburo Oe (Japan), Cynthia Ozick (USA), Philip Roth (USA), Muriel Spark (Scotland), Antonio Tabucchi (Italy), John Updike (USA), A.B. Yehoshua (Israel).

The following of Kadare’s titles have been translated into English: The General of the Dead Army, The Three Arched Bridge, Broken April, Chronicle in Stone, Durontine, The File on H, The Concert, The Palace of Dreams, Albanian Spring, The Pyramid, Elegy for Kosovo, Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, The Successor (forthcoming, January 2006), Agamemnon’s Daughter (forthcoming, date TBC)

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