Kadare, who died in 2024, won international acclaim with novels such as The General of the Dead Army and received the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005. His hometown shaped much of his writing, above all Chronicle in Stone, in which a young boy watches his stone city live through the upheavals of the Second World War. Readers of the novel will recognise many corners of this house.
The original house was destroyed by fire and was carefully rebuilt with the support of UNESCO and Albania’s Ministry of Culture, opening as a museum on 28 January 2018, the writer’s 80th birthday. Inside, a traditional Gjirokastër house of stone walls and rooms on several levels displays furniture, family belongings and material on Kadare’s life and books. The house is reached on foot along steep, cobbled lanes, so wear comfortable shoes.
For lovers of literature, it is an essential stop in the city that inspired one of Europe’s great modern writers.
