Albanian writer Bardhyl Londo was born in 1948 in Përmet, Albania. He studied language and literature at the University of Tirana. After graduating from the faculty, he worked for several years as a teacher in Përmet and then for the literary newspaper “Drita”.  

Bardhyl Londo was the president of the Writers ‘and Artists’ League during the years of changing systems in the country, making the transition of an institution that for almost half a century had been the voice of communist propaganda. For almost a decade after the fall of communism, he would miss the reader, returning in 2010 with the book of poems “Saint Rain”. It seems that freedom had made more complete Londo’s poetry, which was returning to its full dimension.  Londo is among those poets who have admitted that “it was not easy to work without censorship.” “Censorship has penetrated so deeply into us that it is impossible to see it outside of ourselves,” he would say. In 2013 he surprises the reader by coming up for the first time with a book in the prose genre.  The novel “Life, they gave us”, seems to be a reflection of the writer on the time where he lived. An almost autobiographical novel, it brings all of a writer’s concerns about life into a not-so-easy system such as communism, the struggle to remain human, and the challenges of another time such as pluralism. 

Londo belongs to the intellectuals who got engaged even in politics. For many years he has been a member of the Albanian Parliament under the logo of the Democratic Party. Politics is often felt in his later verses, focusing more on the challenges the country has faced. Critical of the attitudes held today towards the literature of social realism, he has often called for the artist’s figure to be separated from his political stance and to judge literature politically uncloaked.

The poet with the white coat and the deep look is undoubtedly one of the most interesting figures of Albanian literature after the ‘80s. His literary creativity includes 8 volumes of poetry as well as several novels. He is the winner of the “Migjeni” award.

/Klara Ruci/