The winner of the National Literature Prize, Enit Karafili Steiner, was invited to the show "This Week", where she discussed her work "Intimate Epic", which won as the best book among dozens of works that participated in the literary competition for 2024.
"I wanted to snatch the Epic from the Marxist camp to say that even small people have something to tell. I have always missed Albania and I tried to achieve this in the book, Albanian characters that are needed. I have only lived in Albania for 18 years, surrounded by Albanian. And this has been my challenge, through Albanian, to be with Albanians. When I received the award, it seemed to me that I had reintegrated into our literary community," said writer Enit Karafili Steiner.
She further said that she missed Albania, so in the book she brought Albanian characters who are loved, but who are also connected by blood.
"I couldn't capture Albania through just one love, I have love for Shkodra and Tirana, my cousins, my high school friends, I couldn't capture Albania through just one kind of love. All those I love had to find a place in the book, otherwise Albania would remain too abstract and I was afraid that it would stifle a kind of national spirit."
Enit Karafili: It seems extraordinary to me that a people that has been colonized for 500 years by a powerful empire like the Ottomans, surrounded by neighbors who have languages in a spatial distance with great extension and who are geopolitical mini-centers, which we are not, a country that in the history of totalitarianism we are the smallest, has a language not like other languages, resilient and stubborn that will survive. That is why I pay homage to Albanian. For me, it sums up Albanianness.
The epic in literature was dedicated to themes of war, masculinity, and leading figures, but I don't think that we mortals don't have our own wars, and this feminist approach to taking the epic from the male camp.
I couldn't capture Albania through just one love, I have love for Shkodra and Tirana, my cousins, my high school friends, I couldn't capture Albania through just one kind of love. All those I love had to find a place in the book, otherwise Albania would remain too abstract and I was afraid that it would stifle a kind of national spirit.
