Elegy for Kosovo

Elegy for Kosovo PDF Author: Ismail Kadare
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 1628722398
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description
June 28, 1389: Six hundred years before Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic called for the repression of the Albanian majority in Kosovo, there took place, on the Field of the Blackbirds, a battle shrouded in legend. A coalition of Serbs, Albanian Catholics, Bosnians, and Romanians confronted and were defeated by the invading Ottoman army of the Sultan Murad. This battle established the Muslim foothold in Europe and became the centerpiece of Serbian nationalist ideology, justifying the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars that the world witnessed with horror at the end of the past century. In this eloquent and timely reflection on war, memory, and the destiny of two peoples, Ismail Kadare explores in fiction the legend and the consequences of that defeat. Elegy for Kosovo is a heartfelt yet clear-eyed lament for a land riven by hatreds as old as the Homeric epics and as young as the latest news broadcast.

Elegy for Kosovo

Elegy for Kosovo PDF Author: Ismail Kadare
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 1628722398
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 67

Get Book Here

Book Description
June 28, 1389: Six hundred years before Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic called for the repression of the Albanian majority in Kosovo, there took place, on the Field of the Blackbirds, a battle shrouded in legend. A coalition of Serbs, Albanian Catholics, Bosnians, and Romanians confronted and were defeated by the invading Ottoman army of the Sultan Murad. This battle established the Muslim foothold in Europe and became the centerpiece of Serbian nationalist ideology, justifying the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars that the world witnessed with horror at the end of the past century. In this eloquent and timely reflection on war, memory, and the destiny of two peoples, Ismail Kadare explores in fiction the legend and the consequences of that defeat. Elegy for Kosovo is a heartfelt yet clear-eyed lament for a land riven by hatreds as old as the Homeric epics and as young as the latest news broadcast.

Three Elegies for Kosovo

Three Elegies for Kosovo PDF Author: Ismail Kadare
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 009956095X
Category : Historical fiction, Albanian
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
'Utterly captivating' New York Times 28 June 1389, the Field of the Blackbirds. A Christian army made up of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Romanians confront an Ottoman army. In ten hours the battle is over, and the Muslims possess the field; an outcome that has haunted the vanquished ever since. 28 June 1989, the Serb Leader Slobodan Milosevic launches his campaign for a fresh massacre of the Albanians, the majority population of Kosovo. In three short narratives Kadare shows how legends of betrayal and defeat simmered in European civilisation for six hundred years, culminating in the agony of one tiny population at the end of the twentieth century. See also: The Palace of Dreams

Historical Dictionary of Kosovo

Historical Dictionary of Kosovo PDF Author: Robert Elsie
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810874830
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
As the seventh and probably last state to arise from the ruins of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo is the newest country in Europe. For centuries, Kosovo, also known as Kosova, was part of the Ottoman Empire, and for most of the 20th century, it was a province of what was once Yugoslavia. After the military conflict in 1998-1999 and a period of administration by the United Nations, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. Focusing not only on Kosovo's turbulent recent years, the second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Kosovo also relates the country's rich culture and long history. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, places, and events; institutions and organizations; and political, economic, social, cultural, and religious facets. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Kosovo.

The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945

The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945 PDF Author: Harold B. Segel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231114042
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 692

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Book Description
The Iron Curtain concealed from western eyes a vital group of national and regional writers. Marked by not only geographical proximity but also by the shared experience of communism and its collapse, the countries of Eastern Europe--Poland, Hungary, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and the former states of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany--share literatures that reveal many common themes when examined together. Compiled by a leading scholar, the guide includes an overview of literary trends in historical context; a listing of some 700 authors by country; and an A-to-Z section of articles on the most influential writers.

The Three-Arched Bridge

The Three-Arched Bridge PDF Author: Ismail Kadare
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1611459907
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
In the Balkan Peninsula, history’s long-disputed bridge between Asia and Europe, the receding Byzantine empire has left behind a patchwork of warring peoples who fight over everything, from their pastures of sheep to the authorship of their countless legends. One such gruesome tale declares that a castle under construction cannot be finished until a young mason’s bride has been walled up alive, one breast left exposed to suckle her growing infant even after her death. Myth becomes perverse reality when a mason is plastered into a bridge over a strategically important river, where his will not be the last human sacrifice.

Border Crossings

Border Crossings PDF Author: Peter Wagstaff
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039102792
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This volume assesses the importance of border crossings in the evolution of European culture and identity, as reflected in the work of modern European writers and film-makers. Contributors chart the processes of transition from stability to change, from the known to the culturally unsettled, treating the themes of migration, exile, allegiance and belonging, journey, marginality, the legacy of war and displacement, memory and the denial of memory. What emerges is a cross-disciplinary reappraisal of the concept of identity, in which fixity is replaced by movement, and in which the dynamic process of story-telling, with its narratives of migration, exile, and borders crossed, mirrors the shifting and nomadic pluralities of modern existence.

History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe

History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe PDF Author: Marcel Cornis-Pope
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027287864
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 728

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Book Description
Types and stereotypes is the fourth and last volume of a path-breaking multinational literary history that incorporates innovative features relevant to the writing of literary history in general. Instead of offering a traditional chronological narrative of the period 1800-1989, the History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe approaches the region’s literatures from five complementary angles, focusing on literature’s participation in and reaction to key political events, literary periods and genres, the literatures of cities and sub-regions, literary institutions, and figures of representation. The main objective of the project is to challenge the self-enclosure of national literatures in traditional literary histories, to contextualize them in a regional perspective, and to recover individual works, writers, and minority literatures that national histories have marginalized or ignored. Types and stereotypes brings together articles that rethink the figures of National Poets, figurations of the Family, Women, Outlaws, and Others, as well as figures of Trauma and Mediation. As in the previous three volumes, the historical and imaginary figures discussed here constantly change and readjust to new political and social conditions. An Epilogue complements the basic history, focusing on the contradictory transformations of East-Central European literary cultures after 1989. This volume will be of interest to the region’s literary historians, to students and teachers of comparative literature, to cultural historians, and to the general public interested in exploring the literatures of a rich and resourceful cultural region.

Peacekeeping in Albania and Kosovo

Peacekeeping in Albania and Kosovo PDF Author: Daan W Everts
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838604499
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
International interventions in conflict-ridden societies have left a trail of debacles behind. The limited military intervention and the civilian follow-up in Albania after the chaos in 1997 is a positive exception. Peacekeeping in Albania and Kosovo explores the concerted efforts to rebuild and modernize a society marked by its communist past, the failed coup attempt of 1998, and the influx of Kosovan refugees in 1999. In Kosovo, the UN-led international rule and its efforts to rebuild a society from scratch were complicated by many restraining political, financial and administrative factors. This book describes how former political advisories agreed to work together, how a successful multi-ethnic police force was built, how a remarkable demilitarization of former guerrillas was achieved and how political factions came to accept the outcome of the first democratic elections.

Mapping European Security After Kosovo

Mapping European Security After Kosovo PDF Author: Peter Van Ham
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719062407
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This book provides new and stimulating perspectives on how Kosovo has shaped the new Europe. It breaks down traditional assumptions in the field of security studies by sidelining the theoretical worldview that underlies mainstream strategic thinking on recent events in Kosovo. The contributors challenge the epistemological definition of the Kosovo conflict, arguing that we should not only be concerned with the 'Kosovo out there', but also with the debate about what counts as security, and how our definition of security is shaped by various power and knowledge interests in Kosovo.

Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans

Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans PDF Author: Ebru Boyar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857715437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The loss of the Balkans was not merely a physical but also a psychological disaster for the Ottoman Empire. In this frank assessment, Ebru Boyar charts the creation of modern Turkish self-perception during the transition period from the late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. The Balkans played a key role in identity construction during this period; humiliated by defeat, the Ottomans were stung by what they saw as a betrayal and ingratitude of the peoples of the region to whom they had brought peace and order for centuries and whom they had defended at the cost of much Turkish blood. It induced a sense of isolation and encapsulated the destruction of the Ottoman Empire's military machine and sense of self-esteem by the Great Powers. This victim mentality was sustained by late Ottoman history-writing and by the historians of the early Republic, for whom history was an essential tool in the creation of the new Turkish national identity for the new Turkish Republic of the 20th century.