Even during the height of Communism, Albania was an outlier, a dystopia seemingly little noticed by most of the world. Here was a country whose dictator, Enver Hoxha, broke ties with the Soviet Union because he believed criticizing and abandoning Stalinism was "revisionism." Having then allied the country with Red China, Hoxha broke that off when China began taking steps to reestablish diplomatic relations with the U.S., believing that to be a betrayal of Marxist-Leninist principles.
The impact of Hoxha's philosophy and policies on routine life in the country is among the subjects of Albanian-born Ornela Vorpsi's The Country Where No One Ever Dies. First published in France in 2004, some 15 years after she left Albania for Italy, it is her first work of fiction to be translated into English. More a novella than a novel, the book's structure tends to reflect the country's political and social disorder.
Translated by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck, The Country Where No One Ever Dies doesn't present a linear narrative. Rather, it is more a series of vignettes of life in 1980s Albania before the collapse of Communism. Although some narrators reappear and at least one is called Ornela, their names and ages change from chapter to chapter. Their stories reflect a society in which sex, death, and repression are common themes.
Most men come off as interested in little other than fornication, "the quintessence of their existence." They lust after even young girls but if the girls don't take care of their "immaculate flower," they will be forever branded a whore. At the same time, another adage of a country is that "a good-looking girl is a whore; an ugly one — poor thing — is not." Some pregnant young women commit suicide by drowning themselves in a nearby lake. Abortion is illegal and the back alley abortions are often performed without anesthesia and, "a little more than occasionally,"' lead to the woman's death anyway.
There is also the injustice created by the pervasive control of the party. When one girl visits her father, a political prisoner, in prison, she notices his face looks different. It is only after returning home the next day that she understands why. "At home, when I looked in the little bag that Mother had brought back with her, I discovered teeth, real teeth, some made of gold, hollow inside. They were what had been missing from my father's face."
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