Musine Kokalari

The Gjirokastra Museum dedicated to the memory of Musine Kokalari, the dissident writer who suffered the punishments inflicted by communism. Open to visitors every day, it is located in the “Palorto” museum district of Gjirokastra.

Anthropologist, poet, politician, writer, with the great ability to deal with the fascist world, she discovered her love for books from an early age thanks to her brother Vesim who ran a bookshop in Tirana. In January 1938 she moved to Rome to study literature at La Sapienza University, where she graduated in 1941 with a thesis on Naim Frashëri. Fascinated by individual creativity, she returned to Albania with the sole purpose of becoming a writer.

At the age of twenty-four she published Siç me thotë nënua plakë, an 80-page collection with ten prose stories focused on the beauty of the dialect of her city. The anthology, inspired by Tuscan folklore and the daily struggles of the women of Gjirokastër, is considered the first work of Albanian literature written by a woman.

Immediately after World War II, Kokalari opened a bookshop and became a member of the Albanian League of Writers and Artists. In 1944, she was accused of being a member of the Albanian Social Democratic Party and was arrested on 17 January 1946 and sentenced to twenty years in prison by the Military Court of Tirana as a saboteur and enemy of the people.

Collocata da Pen International tra i primi trenta scrittori imprigionati dalla politica, nel 1993, l’allora Presidente dell’Albania Sali Berisha le conferì il titolo di martire della democrazia.

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