launch at the Albanian Embassy, November 2023.
outside Adrion bookshop,
Tirana, April 2024
I've been going to the Balkans for more than fifty years. I first went to Albania in 1987, while it was still a communist country. In November 2023, Signal Books published my book, Enver Hoxha's Long Shadow - Travels in Albania. The book looks at how modern Albania is still being affected by those decades of communist rule that began in December 1944 and ended in March 1992.
The book was launched at the Albanian Embassy in London in November last year. In April this year, I was invited to give a presentation about the book at the Adrion bookshop in Scanderbeg Square, Tirana.
The book has had good reviews:
Antonia Young writing in New Eastern European thought it gave "a stimulating overview of a changing society complete with all its future uncertainties.”
Rory Waterman in Studies in Travel Writing said: "Watkins is a knowledgeable, clear-sighted fellow-traveller of the ideologically unrestricted variety, and there is nothing else like his book on the market.”
Henry Bell in the Morning Star described the book as "a fascinating super-imposition of the images of the final years of communism, upon pictures of the rampant yet often stagnant capitalism that liberal democracy has produced in Albania. Watkins delicately presents the gains and losses of both systems and takes care to discuss the changes that he finds with the people who have lived through these national transformations."
A comprehensive review in Balkan Insight by Valery Perry summed the book up as "an intriguing snapshot of a country still scarred by the legacy of its brutal dictator." You can read Valery's full review .
The book was also discussed on Euronews Albania's "Kronike ne Letra", broadcast on 26th April 2024. You can see the segment on YouTube .
