Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe

by Fred C. Abrahams Narrated by Digital Voice David E

Overview

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

“Assiduously researched, compulsively readable.” - LA Review of Books

“A richly woven work of narrative nonfiction.” - The Spectator

“An intimate portrait of the country.” - Foreign Affairs

In the early 1990s, Europe's most closed and repressive state began a startling transformation. After forty years of Communist isolation, Albanians who had been banned from practicing religion, traveling abroad, or even wearing jeans suddenly found themselves devouring the outside world. They opened cafés, launched newspapers, reopened churches and mosques-and blasted previously banned rock music in the streets.

Modern Albania offers a vivid, ground-level history of this dramatic change. It brings to life the final days of the Stalinist regime, the first student protests, the crash of massive pyramid schemes, the war in neighboring Kosovo, and Albania's complex relationship with the United States.

Based on three decades of firsthand work in Albania, more than 200 interviews with key figures-including former Politburo members, intelligence agents, opposition leaders, diplomats, and founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army-and hundreds of previously secret government documents from Albania and the U.S., this book provides a rare front-row seat to the last battle of Cold War Europe.

Explore the declassified documents, photos, videos, and more at: www.modern-albania.com

Editorial Reviews

Transitions Online

"The book really shines when Abrahams presents the results of his scrupulous search for the few, brave souls who dared to raise protests against the communist regime."

The Spectator - Will Nicoll

"Abrahams has been afforded the opportunity to 'peer behind the curtain of a society that is for many outsiders opaque'. Yet it is his character portraits, which are reminiscent of both Ryszard Kapuscinski and John le Carre, which bring this richly woven work of narrative non-fiction to life."

Los Angeles Review of Books - Andrew Gumbel

"[A]ssiduously researched, compulsively readable . . . Abrahams speaks the language, has read the documents, witnessed many of the key episodes for himself, and interviewed almost every player of significance. Albania is a country filled with wily, resourceful, worldly, funny, and fatalistic people, and with their many contributions Abrahamss narrative is as darkly farcical as it is tragic."

Tim Judah

"The canon on modern Albanian political history in English is small but Fred Abraham's book is now a large contribution to it. Excellent and above all readable; anyone interested in contemporary Albanian and Balkan history should be grateful that he has committed his deep knowledge about the country, and above all its travails in the 1990s, to paper."

Slavonic and East European Review

"[Abrahams] account is useful for a number of reasons. For example, it clearly encourages questions about external involvement, especially the Wests decision 1) to tolerate corruption, authoritarian policies and monopolization of power for the sake of regional short-term stability, and 2) to get rid of regimes once they stop serving their own interests."

Robert Legvold

"In this intimate portrait of the country, he explains how the old regime—the last of the Eastern European communist regimes to fall—slowly crumbled and a democratic party, largely student-based, formed, faltered, and gave way to a transfigured communist party."

From the Publisher

"In this intimate portrait of the country, he explains how the old regime—the last of the Eastern European communist regimes to fall—slowly crumbled and a democratic party, largely student-based, formed, faltered, and gave way to a transfigured communist party."-Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs

“[Abraham’s] account is useful for a number of reasons. For example, it clearly encourages questions about external involvement, especially the West’s decision 1) to tolerate corruption, authoritarian policies and monopolization of power for the sake of regional short-term stability, and 2) to get rid of regimes once they stop serving their own interests.”- Slavonic and East European Review

"The book really shines when Abrahams presents the results of his scrupulous search for the few, brave souls who dared to raise protests against the communist regime."- Transitions Online

"Abrahams has been afforded the opportunity to 'peer behind the curtain of a society that is for many outsiders opaque'. Yet it is his character portraits, which are reminiscent of both Ryszard Kapuscinski and John le Carre, which bring this richly woven work of narrative non-fiction to life." -Will Nicoll, The Spectator

Product Details

BN ID:	2940195436971
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	06/07/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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