“From the start of his career, Kadare broke with the prescribed literary mode of socialist realism to write fiction rooted in history, myth, and allegory. But he never became a full-on dissident. Doing so probably would have meant execution. … He saw his books banned and experienced internal exile, but he also served as a minister of parliament. … He describes his own relationship to the dictator as a game of ‘cat and mouse’: He wanted to survive, remain in his homeland, and continue writing; [Enver] Hoxha ‘didn’t want to be seen as an enemy of writers.'”