FAMOUS PEOPLE FROM POGRADEC

LASGUSH PORADECI
Llazar Sotir Gusho (27 December 1899 – 12 November 1987),
commonly known by the pen name Lasgush Poradeci, was an
Albanian philologist, poet, translator, writer and pioneer of modern
Albanian literature. He is regarded as one of the most influential
Albanian writers of the 20th century whose works are directly
connected with Romanticism and Realism.

Born in the small town of Pogradec on the Lake of Ohrid in

Ottoman Albania , he completed his primary and secondary
education in Monastir and Athens, and thus received his academic
education at the universities of Bucharest and Graz. He developed
and maintained close liaison with Asdreni, Ernest Koliqi, Gjergj
Fishta and Mitrush Kuteli who all of them became among the most
outstanding Albanian writers of that time.

Poradeci is best remembered for his poetry collections Vallja e yjve and Ylli i zemrës inspired by
the traditions and peculiarities of Albanian life. His style is characterised for its stylistic and
technical achievement, its form and content as well as its engagement with nature, eroticism and
philosophy. He notably translated several major English, French, German, Italian and Russian
works into Albanian.

MITRUSH KUTELI
Dhimitër Pasko (13 September 1907 – 4 May 1967) was a well-
known Albanian writer, literary critic and translator. Along
with Ernest Koliqi he is considered as the founder of modern
Albanian prose; in Albanian literature his pen name for which
he gained fame was Mitrush Kuteli.

Mitrush Kuteli was born Dhimitër Pasko in the town of

Pogradec at the shores of Lake of Ohrid, son of Pandeli and
Polikseni, his family might have been of non-Albanian origins,
possibly Aromanian. He studied at a Romanian commercial
college in Thessaloniki, later moving to Bucharest where, in
1931, he graduated in economics with a dissertation on the
banking system in the Balkans. And in 1934 he earned a
doctorate on the field, evaluated with "Diplomam Magnam cum
Laudæ".

While in Bucharest he became a journalist and directed the Albanian-language weekly

newspaper Shqipëri' e re (New Albania), published in Constanța, from 1928 until 1933. In 1937 he
organized the publishing Lasgush Poradeci's collection of verse, Ylli i zemrës (The Star of the
heart).

From 1934 he was a high official of the Romanian Ministry of Economy and later on he was the
director of the Cernăuți bank.

He returned to Albania in 1942, and during World War II wrote and self-published most of his
major works. At the end of the war he founded the short-lived literary periodical, Revista letrare
(Literary Review), with Nexhat Hakiu, Vedat Kokona and Sterjo Spasse, joined the editorial board
of Bota e re (New World), the first Albanian post-war literary journal, and became a founding
member of the Albanian League of Writers and Artists.

LUAN STAROVA
Luan Arif Starova born 1941) is an Albanian writer who lives in North Macedonia. He has
published his works both in Albanian and in Macedonian.

Luan Starova was born in Pogradec, an Albanian town on Lake Ohrid, in 1941. His family had
legal and scholarly background: his grandfather on the father's side had served as an Ottoman
qadi in Prilep, before retiring and emigrating to Turkey; his father earned a law degree in
Istanbul, and was a lawyer and a scholar. In 1943, when Luan was a small child, his family moved
to Struga, then annexed by Albania, at the opposite end
of Lake Ohrid from Pogradec, and after the WWII, they
moved to Skopje, the capital of the new SR Macedonia.

He grew up in Tito's Yugoslavia, and studied French

language and literature at Skopje University (1960–1967).
After graduation, he worked as a journalist, becoming in
1968 the editor of Albanian programming on Television
Skopje. However, in the same year he left for Zagreb to
start his postgraduate studies Zagreb University. He
earned a master's degree with a thesis on The Balkans in
the Prose of Guillaume Apollinaire. When working for his
doctoral degree in French and comparative literature
(awarded 1978), he spent some time at Sorbonne, collecting materials on the collaboration of
Apollinaire and the Albanian scholar and writer Faik Konitza. Later, he was to edit a book about
these two writers.

Starova worked as a professor of French literature at Skopje University, eventually serving as the
chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literature.

Since 1985, Starova also worked on a number of diplomatic posts in various European and Arab
countries. After Republic of Macedonia became an independent state, Luan Starova was
appointed as his country's first ambassador to France (1994); later he also served as the
ambassador to Spain (1996) and Portugal.
Luan Starova started writing novels in 1971. Several of Luan Starova's novels published since
1992 form the so-called "Balkan Saga", where he explores the destinies of the people on both
sides of the Albania-Macedonia border under three "Empires" - the Ottoman, the Fascist, and
the Stalinist - through the story of his family.

Luan Starova is also known as a translator of French literary works (e.g., poetry by André
Frénaud) into both Albanian and Macedonian.

Since 1972, Luan Starova participated in the organization of the annual Struga Poetry Evenings.

In 2017 he was awarded the French legion of honor, rank officer.

PUNOI: Erjona Dobra