Biografi: A Traveler's Tale

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Summary: Great read
Review: A facinating look at a country and culture that was hidden from us for nearly 50 years. Not your normal travelogue...but one with a unique progression to its end.

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Summary: Suckers...
Review: During the Cold War, Albania was one of the most closed countries in the world to the West. Under the brutal and bizarre totalitarian regime of Enver Hoxha, the population suffered unthinkable deprivations while the country's secret police compiled bizarre profiles of virtually every citizen (the biografis of the title). When the Eastern Bloc crumbled in 1991, the first thing many of the young did upon discovering newly open borders was to try and flee to Greece and Italy. This book by a writer from New Zealand purports to be the account of several trips there in the early '90s in an attempt to discover this newly free country and learn why its people were fleeing as fast as they could. This would be a hugely welcome window into Albania for readers in the West if it weren't for the the problem that the book is at least partially fiction. Even worse, it's very difficult to tell just what is true and what isn't.

Although it looks like a non-fiction travelogue and catalogued as such by the Library of Congress, at some level the book is a hoax. Jones begins by describing how his interest in Albania was sparked by an eccentric neighbor in New Zealand. This neighbor was an amateur radio enthusiast, and became enamored of Radio Tirana, and ultimately all things Albanian. Upon the collapse of communism, the Jones read the story of a dentist who had been the dictator Hoxha's body double. Intrigued, he set out to discover Albania, and hopefully this double. It is the quest for this double that is the framework for Jones' exploration of Albania, where he finds an incredibly poor and malnourished population eager to share stories of deprivation and torture under communist rule. The only problem is that there never was any double, nor any accounts of there being one.

Not that Jones ever tells you this. Rather, one would have to do some research outside the book to learn this. And this calls into question what parts ofthe book are real and what aren't. To be sure, the stories of suffering under Hoxha's rule sound authentic and mirror other accounts, but did Jones actually ever travel there and talk to people? There's a portion where he has tea with the former ruler's wife, and this almost certainly is a fabrication. But who can tell? Either way, the entire project is compromised and a betrayal of anyone seeking to learn more about modern Albania. Had it simply been labeled as fiction, it would be an interesting work, and perhaps one should congratulate Jones on accomplishing such a devious piece of misdirection, but it seems a betrayal of the suffering of the Albanian people to do so.

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Summary: identity in a totalitarian state
Review: Enver Hoxha's regime was one of the most brutal and oppressive in all of Communist Eastern Europe. In this fascinating book, Jones picks through the aftermath of Hoxha's regime, interviewing people who were hostile to him (including former political prisoners and priests), those who remember him fondly (including his wife and son), and those who were simply indifferent. His central theme, as the title indicates, is "biografi," the dominant concern of Hoxha's totalitarianism. If your father had fought with the Communists during World War II, you were likely to be favored; if your grandfather had prospered under King Zog, you could be sent to jail. Jones explores the continuing fascination with biografi in the new, democratic Albania. In one extraordinary passage, he encounters a large group of people lined up outside a government office to correct the official versions of their lives, and those of their family members.

This preoccupation with identity is also reflected in the sections of the book dealing with Hoxha's double, a provincial dentist who was surgically altered to become, essentially, the dictator's twin. He appeared at many public events as Hoxha, and lived in relative luxury in the government compound in Tirana. However, his old life had been erased, and his family killed off. Worse still, after Hoxha died and the communists were overthrown, he was attacked by a mob who believed him to be the ghost of the former dictator. In an attempt to reclaim a separate identity, he intentionally disfigured his own face.

The experience of Albanian Communism is a bizarre passage in 20th century history, and Jones' books offers plenty of lurid anecdotes and details of Hoxha's brutality. More importantly, though, he manages to explore the systematic dismantling of individual identity in a real-life Orwellian state. The perserverance of the Albanian people in the face of such an attack is particulary remarkable. This is a fascinating book, and Jones has done a great service by introducing English-language readers to the horrors of Hoxha's Albania.

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Summary: Accurately and beautifully described
Review: Having traveled in Albania around the same time as the unnamed narrator in this book, I found the book's descriptions of people and places exceptionally accurate. A great story, a terrific device for conveying the misery and insecurity of immediate post-transition Albania, and well-written besides.

Rating:
Summary: Well written
Review: See how Enver Hoxha ruled with his people... You'll find it hard to believe...

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Summary: Fascinating but false
Review: This appears to be a fascinating account of the aftermath of Hoxha's nightmare dictatorship in Albania. Individuals and places are evocatively described and you begin to get a picture of how they used to survive both the regime and the chaos that followed, often with more dignity and decency than most of us would manage. Extremely annoying is that Jones turns out to have made the whole thing up. He never actually admits it, but I gather from other sources that the central character in the book is completely invented, which means the whole book must be viewed as fiction. An enjoyable read, but is it all a pack of lies?

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Summary: Not Your Typical Travelogue
Review: When I started reading "Biografi," I expected a straightforward travelogue on Albania and its peoples. After all, Albania seems to bring out the travelogue in authors. I can think of several on Albania alone off the top of my head. But most of these are 19th and early 20th century journals. What is surprising is that even in the 1990's, and one assumes into the future, travelogues are and will still be written on a country that is, amazingly enough, in Europe. The reason for this is few know anything about Albania. There may be a vague recollection of its Communist past; beyond this people draw a blank. This is where the travelogues come in; they are an easy way of discovering and presenting the unknown. Unfortunately, they are often grossly inaccurate and fraught with bias or outright hostility by the author in question. The topic, in this case Albania, is the problem. To outsiders, Albania is weird. Centuries of Ottoman domination destroyed any chance of development and left the majority of the population Muslim (at least nominally), and the rugged terrain further hindered outside influence. What makes this book different is that it isn't travelogue in the orthodox sense; it is a strange mix of fact and fantasy about a misunderstood country.

I was greatly pleased to read that Jones learned about Albania the same way I did, namely through shortwave radio. I vividly remember listening to Radio Tirana back in the 1980's. Tirana always stood out on the dial because the Chinese transmitters were so poorly modulated that the announcers sounded as though they were talking into a bucket. Jones's neighbor, who plays a prominent part in this book, often listened to Radio Tirana, and Jones became interested. When the Communist collapses came in the early 1990's, Jones decided to take a trip to Albania (lucky duck!). This book is the result.

Jones's quest in Albania is to find Petar Shapallo. Petar, a dentist by trade, is abducted by Communist leader Enver Hoxha's secret police so he can become Hoxha's body double. Shapallo assumes Hoxha's duties when Hoxha is ill. When Hoxha dies, Shapallo is cast out into society, where his likeness to a suddenly unpopular leader leads Shapallo to mutilate his face and go into hiding. During the search for Shapallo, Jones runs into a grand cast of characters, both local and foreign. Jones even talks to Hoxha's widow, Nexhmije, along the way. Everywhere Jones goes, he finds a country in a freefall into chaos. What's worse, the people are decaying just as rapidly. Albanians constantly worry over their "biografi," which are official files held by the Albanian secret police. The stories are heartrending; people locked up, exiled, or executed for trivial matters. A family member of thirty years ago with the wrong connections can land their descendents in jail, or worse. Outside of these biografis, Albanians seem to have no identity of their own.

Jones is very concerned with journeys in this book. Everyone is going somewhere; Jones is going to Albania, Shapallo is trying to return to his village, many Albanians are headed to Italy or points beyond. Jones even relates a tale about his aunt running away from her marriage to his uncle. This obsession with movement seems to be tied up with identity. None of the characters in the book seem to know who they are or why they do what they do. They just know they must GO, somewhere, anywhere. Hope lies just over the horizon and they'll find something if they can just get there. When Jones looks up some Albanians in Italy, they are unhappy because Italy isn't the paradise they thought it would be; now they talk about going to America. Will Albania ever find itself? Will we, as humans, ever find ourselves? It seems that this is a message Jones is trying to convey.

Of course, I could be completely off my rocker. What I do know is this book goes way beyond travelogue. There are dimensions to this book I can only guess at. Even if you don't want to read deeply into this book, there are still plenty of good things to find. Jones goes into some depth in his descriptions of the beautiful scenery in rural Albania, and the characters are, for the most part, well crafted and worth reading about. I do think some knowledge on Albania is helpful. The map in the book is worthy for place descriptions, but a quick web search might help with some basic information and names. You should know who Enver Hoxha is and why he is such a despicable character. I hope they reprint this book soon.