About the Work by Genta Nishku

In the 1930s, periodicals were the Albanian public’s most important avenue for discussing current events, local issues, and international developments. Newspapers, magazines, and journals were published in every corner of the country, from independent ventures to state and institutional publications—all of which enjoyed wide readership and eager participation from hopeful writers. For a country still seeking to establish its national identity, these periodicals provided the space for debating issues like the emancipation of women, the role of intellectuals in shaping culture, or the perennial question of whether Albania should look to the west or the east as its model. 

They also provided a platform for the country’s young writers. Writing from his hometown of Shkodër, Migjeni was only twenty-four years old when, in June of 1936, he sent this satirical piece to Bota e Re (The New World), a biweekly magazine that only a few months into its run had already amassed a loyal following. Operating from a small building in Korça and led by editor-in-chief Gaqo Evangjeli, a leftist intellectual with a strong editorial vision, The New World was published from April 1936 to February 1937, when the censorship campaign of King Zog’s government forcefully shuttered it. During the time it was active, the magazine and its editors and writers, placed themselves in the center of the aforementioned debates. 

Migjeni’s short story captures the spirit of the times. With his characteristic wry wit, he points to the hypocrisies of other periodicals, which unlike The New World, tried to claim apoliticalness at a time of rising fascism and open collaboration between the Albanian government and Mussolini’s Italy. Despite the fictional editors’ efforts to turn a blind eye, the world seeps in through the cracks, and through the actions of both animal and human characters in the story, Migjeni references conflict in Spain as well as Italian colonial aggression in Ethiopia. When a woman wearing a fashionable bobbed haircut—a German bubikopf—dismisses the magazine, it appears that even this prototype of European modernity isn’t pleased by the editors’ attempt to create an idealistic publication. 

Corresponding with Migjeni in May of 1936 prior to publication, the editors of The New World write: “‘A Magazine’s Contents’ reads bleaker than it should. Is it not possible for you to review it one more time?” 

It’s not clear if the version published that June was toned down or not, but Migjeni’s story, along with this correspondence between writer and editor, give a glimpse into the energy of Albania’s literary community after the First World War.

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MIGJENI was the nom-de-plume of the poet and writer Millosh Gjergj Nikolla, born in 1911 in Shkodër, Albania. Breaking from a literary tradition rooted in romanticism and nationalism, Migjeni distinguished himself with works that captured the misery and struggle of his country’s most disenfranchised communities. After completing his studies in Monastir (now Bitola, North Macedonia), he was assigned as a teacher in the mountainous villages near his hometown. It was there that he began writing short stories and poetry, inspired in large part by the social inequality he witnessed and conveyed in the Gheg dialect of the region. Though plagued by ill health from tuberculosis, he was a frequent contributor to the periodicals of the time, and was preparing his first manuscript before his untimely death in 1938. The books Vargjet e lira (Free Verse) and Novelat e qytetit të veriut (Novellas of the Northern City) collected his poetry and short fiction. Since his death, Migjeni has been the subject of countless works of criticism and scholarship in Albania, which often name him as one of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century.

GENTA NISHKU is a writer, researcher, and translator from Tirana, now living in New York City. Her writing has been published in venues like the Kenyon Review, Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, minor literature(s), new_sinewes, among others, and her translations have been published by Akashic Books and Apofenie. She is at work on her first novel, which was recently supported by a Yaddo residency.