The Loser

An impassioned indictment of government oppression, this novel follows the fortunes of Thesar Lumi, a laborer living under communist rule in Soviet-controlled Albania. At the center of the story is a crucial decision Lumi makes in the last days of the Second World War: he has a chance to leave Albania on a refugee ship headed to Italy, but at the last moment he disembarks and returns home to his village. As it happens, he has chosen a grim existence. To survive, he is forced to work in a concrete factory, from which he watches friends and family members run afoul of repressive new laws. But even as the book skillfully depicts the slow suffocation of a whole society, it also celebrates the moments of love and hope that sustain the people?and holds out the possibility that Lumi may have been right to remain at home.

Fatos Kongoli is one of the most important literary figures in Albania today. Trained as a mathematician, he began to write novels in the 1990s, after the fall of Albania's communist government and the rise of a free press.