Kosova [Kosovo] Prime Minister Thaci's visit to Albania, apart from its political message, also conveyed a message to the effect that, having to cope with a new political situation under the same national umbrella, Kosova...

Ismail Kadare wrote for decades under Enver Hoxha's brutal communist regime in Albania, was suspected of spying and threatened with punishment for subversive writing. Despite all this, at 72 he is serene...

In the eyes of western Europeans, Albania has long had about it an aura of mystery and exoticism. Ismail Kadare (the country's leading novelist and winner of the Man Booker International prize in 2005) played a riff on this...

THESE TALES OF repression linger in the mind for their indictment of dictators and for a tone of bleak bewilderment, that becomes furious comprehension at the depths to which regimes will sink to retain power over people...

A collection of essays, Encounters with Civilizations: from Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa, by Gëzim Alpion, Professor of Sociology and Media Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, has now been published in Kolkata...

According to the international facts, the number of individuals who live today with HIV infection and AIDS have exceeded the 40 millions. The increase rate of pandemic continues going up and in 2003 were reported above 5 millions...

Kosovo and its population, regardless of ethnicity, were in need for international assistance for getting its freedom. Come out with this, regardless of ethnicity, because non Albanians were suffering from violence of Serbian...

This report documents violations investigated by Helsinki Watch during missions to Kosovo and Serbia proper in May, June and December 1991. Participants in those missions included Jonathan Fanton, chair of Helsinki Watch...

Born in Albania and educated at the Universities of Tirana, Cairo and Durham, Dr Gëzim Alpion is
Lecturer in Sociology and Media Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Prior to joining the
Department of Sociology at Birmingham...

Many Albanians apparently needed a figure like Mother Teresa during the 1990s. Known to the world mainly as economic migrants fleeing from poverty in Albania and as political refugees escaping from Serbian persecution in...

In this 284 page paperback, Albanian-born writer, Gëzim Alpion, redefines our idea of this 20th century icon. The intense animosity displayed by theologians and writers against her are contextualized. Beginning with reporter...

The Indian edition (in English) of Dr Gëzim Alpion’s acclaimed Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? is a ground-breaking study of one of India’s – and the Catholic world’s – most enigmatic figures and is due for release this week...

Arnold von Harff (1), a German knight, traveller and writer, was born in about 1471 into a noble family of the Lower Rhineland (Harff on the Erft, a village northwest of Cologne). In the autumn of 1496, he set out on a journey...

The Italian humanist and historian George Merula (1430-1494), also known as Georgius Merula Alexandrinus or Giorgio Merlano di Negro, was born in Alessandria in northern Italy. He studied in Milan under Francesco Filelfo...

The 'Directorium ad passagium faciendum', which can be translated as 'Initiative for making the passage', is a mediaeval Latin manuscript (also available in an early French translation) attributed alternatively to a monk called Burcard...

Typical of the many short references to the Albanians in Byzantine chronicles is the following text by the Emperor John VI Cantacuzene (r. 1347-1355), whose 'History' covers the years 1320-1356. Here as in other texts, the...

Narratives of pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land provide a primary source of information for much of the eastern Mediterranean in the first half of the second millennium, and in one such narrative (1) dating from the year...

The so-called 'Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis' (Anonymous Description of Eastern Europe) (1) is a mediaeval Latin text from the year 1308 which contains a survey of the lands of Eastern Europe, in particular the...

Historian and scholar George Pachymeres (1242- ca. 1310) was born in Nicaea and held high office in Constantinople. His 'History' covers the reigns of Michael VIII Palaeologus (r. 1261-1282) and Andronicus II...

Historian George Acropolites (1217-1282) was the tutor of Emperor Theodore II Lascaris (r. 1254-1258) and later became rector of the university in Constantinople. His 'Chronicle' of the Nicaean Empire, based...