The English publishing house AM Publishers, on November 10, 2023, announced the publication in English of the novel "Vajzat e mjegullë" by the writer Namik Dokle, translated by Edona Llukaçaj. The novel comes with this comment from the publishing house:
"At the end of the world, or nowhere, in the Albanian area of the province of Gora, hidden in the fog, there is a small village called BUKOJNA, in a place where, according to legend, the sun rises twice a day and the moon sets two times every night; a settlement whose inhabitants, of Bogomil origin, have been augmented by a mixture of other origins; from the beautiful Vlachs, from the learned Jews, or from the brave and proud mountaineers. It is a village where "men grow gray from childhood and see the night better than the day" - as MAJKA says, a three-hundred-year-old woman who was forgotten by death. And right here, in this microcosm of the Albanian Gora, they try to take root, with the ruthless severity of the fifties, new standards of living, enforced by the communist dictatorship, under the scrutinizing and suspicious gaze of a child who narrates the events of the novel.
Thus flows, in an asphyxiating, contrasting bed, sometimes even underground, the story of the spiritual resistance of a small community, with its own special language, with its own legends, rites and customs, but divided as if by a sword by the border old Albanian-Yugoslav ("Tito here, Enveri there, - fog in the middle"). It is the resistance to save one's own identity, language, culture and centuries-old traditions, to continue being what it is, in the "new times" of repression.
The violent attempt to eradicate man's memory, his identifying spirit, is becoming more ferocious every day against everything human, against property, against the feast of St. George, against wedding traditions, against Mother's prayers and the songs of girls who gathered every evening at the seven gates of the village, against legends and curses (like that of Sinan Pasha), against reason and free speech of solidarity (represented by the TEACHER) and, finally, against the undeniable human right to preserve one's dignity: "Either you are, or you are not human!"
The repression of Enver Hoxha's regime collides with those people; sadness covers everything, when all the girls are forcibly sent to "action" and they are not allowed to return for the Shëngjergji holiday, the lands on the border become nobody's, the basement of the communist organization becomes scary, the committee with a balcony and the committee without a balcony control everything through the border commander, the self-proclaimed secretary Stalin of the village, the political police and the plaintiffs' spies. Taxes and obligations to deliver agricultural products to the state lead to a regime of starvation. And finally the shootings; first the bear that crossed the border, then the dog that bit the delegate ("this is what will happen to whoever bites our new state!") and finally the Teacher who is shot on the scaffolding where the killed bear was once placed.
And precisely that forgotten village among the mountains, from which they try to steal the magic and the natural flow of life, resists in the only way it knows and can, expresses its opposition through loyalty and preservation of folklore and its own speech, faced with the living language of the characters, the immortal song, with the brutal and dirty depravity of the new rulers.
We are, therefore, not just before the story of a village, but before a story of survival and spiritual resistance, with tones and colors of ballads, from a seemingly family chronicle, weaving the Saga of Gora and the Gorans. This is the first novel written about them and their land, and it is a fascinating account that is read in one breath.”
The English edition of this novel comes after its publication in Turkish, Bosnian, Bulgarian and Spanish. The publication in Greek is also in the process. (A2 Televizion)
