President Begaj, accompanied by the First Lady Armanda Begaj, met with writer Ismail Kadare and his spouse Helena Kadare.

The President took to the social media to send his best wishes to Kadare, praising him as the best ambassador of the Albanian culture.

“Together with Armanda, we had the pleasure to extend our best birthday wishes to the master of the Albanian literature, Ismail Kadare. Translated into more than 45 languages, Kadare is the best ambassador of the Albanian culture, history and identity. He is the writer and the intellectual who has honoured the name of Albania in the world,” President Begaj wrote.

The renowned writer Ismail Kadare celebrates his 87^th birthday anniversary on Saturday. He was born on January 28, 1936, in Palorto, Gjirokaster, southern Albania.

Ismail Kadare is an international literary icon, a very prolific writer and a cultural ambassador for Albania and a recipient of awards such as the Man Booker International Prize, the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca and the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts. He has also been a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times. He was first introduced to the international literary scene as a poet in the early 1960s before, after publishing poetry as a student of both foreign languages and literature at the University of Tirana. In the late 1960s and 70s Kadare subsequently established himself as a talented writer of fiction and penned many novels and short stories.

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