Agron Tufa

Agron TUFA was born in Dibër on April 1, 1967. He is a poet, writer, essayist, translator and scholar. He studied Albanian language and literature at Tirana University and continued his studies at the Literature Institute “Maxim Gorky” in Moscow, Russia. Then he followed his postgraduate studies at the Institute of European Cultures (IEK) in Moscow as well. In Albania he defended his PhD for Translation Philosophy and Theory. Actually he is the Executive Director of the Institute for Studies of Communist Crimes and Consequences in Tirana, Albania, but at the same time teaches at the Faculty of History and Philology (Tirana University) the World Literature of XXth Century. He has published numerous collections of poetry, novels, essays, translations and studies and has been praised for these with national and international prizes. In 2004 he receives the “Penda e Argjendtë” [Silver Quill] Award for the best novel (“Fabula rasa“), while in 2009 The National Literature Award. In 2010 he receives “Rexhai Surroi” Award for the novelof the year in Kosovo with his “Tenxherja”. The poetry collection “Kafsha apo Fantazma” [Animal or the ghost] (2016) receives the “Author of the year” Award by the Publishers National Bookfair (2016).

Among his books are the poetry collections “Aty tek portat Skee” [Down at the Scaean Gates ] (1996), “Rrethinat e Atlantidës” [Atlantis surroundings] (2002), “Avangardë engjëjsh” [Vanguard of angels] (2005), “Fryma mbi ujëra” [Spirit upon waters] (2007), “Gjurma në rrjedhë” [Footprints in water stream] (2010), “Fragmentet e Gjësë” [Fragments of it] (2012); “Kafsha apo Fantazma” [Animal or the ghost] (2017); the novels “Dueli” [The duel] (1998), “Fabula Rasa” [Fabula rasa] (2005), “Mërkuna e Zezë” [Black Wednesday] (2005), “Tenxherja” [The pot] (2009), “Gurit të varrit ia rrëfej” [I confess it to the tomb] (2015) and the short prose collections “Thembra e Akcilit” [Everybody’s Tendon] (2009), essays “Janusi qindfytyrësh” [Janus of hundred faces] (2004) and “Kuja e Mnemozinës” [Mnemosyne’s Howl] (2011), “Nga hiri i të vdekurve” [From the dead ashes], etc. He has translated in Albanian many important Russian poets, such as Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Cvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Olga Sedakova, etc., and prose writers such as Nikolay Leskov, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Andrey Platonov, Vladimir Nabokov, etc.