Isuf LUZAJ
BIOGRAPHY
Isuf Luzaj (1913-2000) was born in Kanina near Vlora and went
to school in Shkodra. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris from
1933-1935. Forced to interrupt his education, he returned to
Albania and worked as a French teacher in Elbasan, Korça
and Vlora. From 1940 to 1941 he was imprisoned in Italy, but
thereafter returned to Albania as a resistance figure in the
anti-Communist Balli Kombëtar (National Front) movement.
During the Communist takeover in 1944, he fled to Italy where
he worked as a teacher of Latin in Brescia. In 1948 Luzaj emigrated
to Argentina where he studied literature and lived for seventeen
years. In 1960 he was director of the French institute for higher
studies in Buenos Aires. He moved to the United States in 1965
where he taught French and Spanish at the University of New Hampshire.
He died in Chicago on 24 November 2000 and was buried, in accordance
with his last wish, in Vlora.
Luzaj is the author of verse and short stories, as well as
of political, philosophical and scholarly writings. His works
were little known in Albania until recently. Among his verse
publications are: Gloria e çmendjes (The Glory
of Insanity), Tirana 1995; and Lamtumira e yjeve (The
Farewell of the Stars), Tirana 2001. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Modern
Authors from Albania (late 20th - 21st centuries)
