![](https://www.thetimes.com/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F281a3ce8-41fc-4db2-8be6-ef5b2aec9061.jpg?crop=2752%2C1548%2C0%2C1589&resize=1200)
Ismail Kadare, Albania’s leading novelist who sought asylum in France
Albania under its communist dictator Enver Hoxha was a byword for paranoia, isolation and poverty. It was certainly not known for its cultural life. Yet the writer Ismail Kadare was, as one historian put it, “a rare sturdy flower growing, inexplicably, in …