Tirana Modern

Guided by the thesis that literature can transform social reality <i>Tirana Modern</i> draws on ethnographic and historical material to examine the public culture of reading in modern Albania. As its starting point this book asks: How has Albanian literature and literary translation shaped social action during the longue durée of Albanian modernity?<br> <br> Drawing on material collected through fieldwork with a community of readers writers and translators attached to the independent Albanian publisher Pika pa sipërfaqe (Point without Surface) <i>Tirana Modern</i> provides a tightly focused ethnography of literary culture in Albania that brings into relief the more general dialectic between social imagination and social reality as mediated by reading and literature.