Coffeehouse Days Ismail Kadare

DESCRIPTION: Coffeehouse Days by Ismail Kadare, translated by Piro Dollani, Peter Koch Editions for Rainmaker Editions, 2004. Folio size (oblong) 15.75 W x 10.75 H inches (400 x 273 mm). Limited edition of 125 copies (26 lettered and 99 numbered) - this is letter Q. Designed and printed letterpress on Zerkall-Nideggen paper using wooden type and photo-polymer plates by Peter Rutledge Koch. Composed in four Renner's Futura Bold typefaces, three of which were specially made for this edition in progressive states of decay by Christopher Stinehour. Illustrated with photomontages of Albania by Peter Koch using vintage photographs of Albania. Inner hard cover bound by John De Merritt, bookbinder. Housed in a galvanized steel clamshell box made by G. and L. Manufacturing with black silk screen printing. Signed by Ismail Kadare and Peter Koch in the colophon. CONDITION: Fine condition. Note that the 'washed' appearance of the rear cover of the steel clamshell case (see photo) is intrinsic to the design. DISCUSSION: Ismail Kadare, who died recently in July 2024, was an Albanian poet and novelist who was an important voice against totalitarianism. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in an extremely isolated Albania under authoritarian rule by a Stalinist regime, he devised ways of circumventing their strict censorship. He won the Neustadt International Prize for LIterature in 2020 with the nominating comment: "Kadare is the successor to Franz Kafka. No one since Kafka has delved into the infernal mechanism of ttalitarian power and its impact on the human soul in as much hypnotic depth as Kadare. " Coffeehouse Days is an excerpt from Kadare's first novel 'The City Without Signs'. NOTE: This is a large heavy book and international shipping cost to the United Kingdom and Europe is $75 U.S. dollars.