Albanian Chronicles: now available in English

Today I am pleased to announce an important step in the editorial journey of Albanian Chronicles: the first two volumes of the series are now available in English.

This is not simply a linguistic edition. It is the opening of a cultural project to a wider international audience. The history of Albania, its heroes, its wounds, its memory and its identity deserve to be known beyond the boundaries of the Italian language, because they belong to a broader historical landscape: that of the Balkans, of Europe, and of all those who seek in history not only dates and events, but the deeper meaning of a people’s identity.

Albanian Chronicles was born from this idea: to tell the story of Albania through books that combine historical research, narrative clarity, memory and cultural divulgation.

The first two volumes now available in English are Athleta Christi – George Kastrioti Skanderbeg and The Most Important Events – Chronicle of the Twentieth Century: Decisive Historical Events in Albania.

Both books are also available in Italian, in their original editions: Athleta Christi – La monografia completa dell’eroe nazionale albanese: Giorgio Kastrioti Scanderbeg and I fatti più importanti – Cronaca del Novecento: eventi storici decisivi dell’Albania.

A series created to tell Albania beyond its borders

Albanian Chronicles is conceived as a journey through Albanian history, culture and memory.

The aim of the series is to offer readers an accessible but serious path through different periods of Albanian history, restoring the face of a nation often described in a fragmented, superficial or marginal way. Albania, however, has a complex, ancient, dramatic and fascinating history: a history of resistance, ruptures, rebirths, isolation, pride and continuous search for itself.

With this English publication, the project opens itself to international readers, scholars, lovers of Balkan history, members of the Albanian diaspora and all those who wish to understand more deeply the role of Albania within European history.

The series wants to be precisely this: an entrance into Albanian memory, a bridge between past and present, between Italian and English, between personal experience and historical narration.

Athleta Christi – George Kastrioti Skanderbeg

The first volume of the series is dedicated to the highest and most symbolic figure in Albanian history: George Kastrioti Skanderbeg.

Athleta Christi – George Kastrioti Skanderbeg is a monograph designed to recount the life, deeds and historical legacy of the Albanian national hero. Skanderbeg is not merely a fifteenth-century military leader, nor only the protagonist of an extraordinary period of resistance against Ottoman expansion. He is, above all, a founding figure of Albanian identity.

The book follows his origins, the Kastrioti family, the years spent at the Ottoman court, his return to Albania, the liberation of Krujë, the creation of the alliance among the Albanian princes, and the long resistance against one of the most formidable powers of the time.

Yet the work does not limit itself to military history. Skanderbeg is also presented as a political man, a diplomat, a religious and national symbol, capable of projecting the small Albania of the fifteenth century into a European dimension. His figure thus becomes the meeting point between history and legend, between documentation and memory, between the destiny of one man and that of an entire people.

In this sense, Athleta Christi is a book for those who wish to discover Skanderbeg not as a distant monument, but as a living presence in Albanian history: a man who embodied resistance, dignity and the will of a nation to survive.

The book is also available in Italian with the title Athleta Christi – La monografia completa dell’eroe nazionale albanese: Giorgio Kastrioti Scanderbeg.

Buy the English or Italian edition on Amazon

The Most Important Events – Chronicle of the Twentieth Century

The second volume of the series is dedicated to the Albanian twentieth century, a century marked by radical transformations, conflicts, hopes, political tragedies and deep social fractures.

The Most Important Events – Chronicle of the Twentieth Century: Decisive Historical Events in Albania leads the reader into one of the most complex periods of Albanian history. The book begins with the struggle for independence and follows the major turning points that shaped the country’s destiny: the birth of the Albanian state, the instability that followed, the reign of King Zog, the Italian and German occupations, the Resistance, the long communist regime of Enver Hoxha, the democratic transition and the difficult transformations of the 1990s.

For Albania, the twentieth century was not merely a historical period. It was a dramatic laboratory of national identity, isolation, ideology, survival and rebirth. In only a few decades, the country passed from the Ottoman legacy to independence, from monarchy to foreign occupation, from communist dictatorship to the difficult opening of democratic life.

The book was born from the desire to recount these events in a clear and orderly way, without reducing them to a cold chronological sequence. Each chapter seeks to restore the human and political meaning of the events, showing how history shaped Albanian culture, society and collective memory.

This English edition makes the book accessible to an international audience and allows an essential part of Albanian history to reach readers who do not read Italian, but wish to understand the events that shaped contemporary Albania.

The book is also available in Italian with the title I fatti più importanti – Cronaca del Novecento: eventi storici decisivi dell’Albania.

Buy the English or Italian edition on Amazon

Two books, one memory

With the publication in English of these two volumes, Albanian Chronicles takes its first international step.

On one side, Athleta Christi looks to the figure of Skanderbeg, to the founding myth, to medieval resistance and to the birth of a symbol destined to cross the centuries.

On the other, The Most Important Events brings the reader into the heart of the Albanian twentieth century, where history becomes closer, more painful and more recognisable: independence, wars, occupations, dictatorship, the fall of the regime and the democratic transition.

They are two different books, but deeply connected. The first tells the story of the hero and the symbolic root. The second tells the century of modern trials. Together, they open the path of a series dedicated to Albania, to its memory and to its voice in the world.

The publication in English does not replace the Italian editions. On the contrary, it accompanies and completes them. The series was born through the Italian-language work of Cronache Albanesi, and today it finds in English a new possibility of circulation and dialogue.

For this reason, I consider Albanian Chronicles not only a translation project, but the natural continuation of a work begun years ago: to tell Albania, to make it readable, and to transmit its complexity, beauty and historical strength.