MARINELA PRIFTI
DOI:
Abstract
This study explores the reception of Italo Calvino’s work in Albanian literary culture from the mid-twentieth century to the early twenty-first century, focusing on two distinct phases: the communist period (1954–1981) and the post-communist transition (1995– 2010). During the communist era, Calvino’s presence in Albanian publishing was limited and ideologically filtered, with only a small selection of his neorealist stories translated in ways that aligned with socialist aesthetics and political expectations. After the 1990s, the opening of Albania’s cultural sphere enabled a rapid diversification of translations, critical discourse, and academic engagement with Calvino’s experimental and postmodern narratives. By analyzing bibliographic data, translation patterns, publishing contexts, and media commentaries, the study demonstrates how shifts in ideology and cultural policy reshaped Calvino’s image from a moral realist to a multifaceted modernist. The findings highlight the decisive role of translators, editors, and publishers in mediating literary reception as well as the broader transformation of Albania’s cultural landscape during its transition to democracy.
Keywords: cultural mediation, Italian literature, Italo Calvino, literary reception, neorealism, translation.