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Presented at COD "Mossanga", Fate Velaj's new novel - a book that does not tell, but unravels and reveals

2026-01-28 17:50:06Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Presented at COD "Mossanga", Fate Velaj's new novel - a book that

It was Elisa Spiropali, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, who delivered a laudatio on the multiple persona that lies within Fate Velaj.

During the discussion moderated by Anila Çuli between the author and publisher Bujar Hudhri (Onufri), it became clear that Mossanga goes far beyond the historical novel. It is a text that transforms memory into language and power into an integral part of human tragedy.

Velaj approaches the communist dictatorship not through indictment, but through recognition and reflection. As in Milan Kundera's novel The Joke, criticism arises from irony, from a laugh that remains tight in the throat. The grotesque situation and the precise shifts towards thriller create a space where totalitarianism loses its masks.

Albania, 1966.

At the height of the Cold War. Relations with the Soviet Union have been severed, while the first Chinese have just arrived. The country lives in a fever of suspicion and ideological isolation.

In the city of Vlora, news spreads that more foreigners will soon arrive. After speculations about whether they will be Cambodian or Vietnamese communists, nine Congolese children actually arrive – all under ten years old, the children of commanders of the civil war in Congo.

Initially, the regime treats them with a kind of propagandistic mercy, as victims of imperialism. But this mercy soon turns into paranoia: suspicions arise that they are spies, sent by foreign secret services.

The government decides to "form" them - to make them model communists, to mold them with the ideology of Enver Hoxha, Marx, and Lenin.

But as the years pass, they are no longer children. They demand more food, sing banned songs like John Lennon's Imagine or Adriano Celentano's 240,000 Baci, and one of them becomes involved in a love affair with a girl from the regime's upper class.

That's enough for everything to be interpreted as a well-organized conspiracy by Western secret services. Congolese children are arrested.

With this novel, Fate Velaj – as rarely happens in literature – makes a resonant tomography of the communist system and issues an indictment for generations to come.

Mossanga shows the banality of power, its absurd logic and the everyday violence that appears as order. Power does not seem monumental, but unpleasant, ridiculous and therefore even more threatening. Between comedy and tragedy lies an almost invisible line – this is where Velaj's refined prose intervenes.

Thus, the novel becomes both a literary anatomy of dictatorship and a meditation on human survival. Mossanga rejects pathos, seeking not consolation but clarity – and therein lies its enduring power.

EX-BOOK

From the words of Minister Elisa Spiropali about "Fate or more precisely, about the man who wakes up every day at 4-5 in the morning and paints or writes until 8. He sends me what he has done; I look at them, enjoy them, give him my opinion and then we start working together. I at the ministry in Tirana, he at the embassy in Vienna.

This is a creative dialogue that defies distance and time.

Then Fate sends me back what he has accomplished during the day: meetings, achievements, and assessments – an uninterrupted stream of deeds and actions, starting early with artistic inspiration and ending in the evening with a diplomatic spirit. Fate treats this, diplomacy, as a work of art, because at its core, he himself is an artistic creation.

I tried waking up that early one day, but I only made it until 6 am. It was impossible to keep up at that pace.

His novel, "MOSSANGA", is evidence of this discipline, perseverance and extraordinary love for art, for the written word and for life as a continuous creation..."

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