The False Apocalypse

A disturbing work concerning the events of 1997, a tragic year in the history of post-communist Albania. After the world's most isolated country emerged from Stalinist dictatorship and opened up to capitalism, many people fell prey to fraudsters who invited them to invest in so-called 'pyramid schemes.' At the start of 1997, these pyramids crumbled one after another, causing widespread demonstrations and protests. The conflict became increasingly violent, leading to the collapse of the state and of the country's institutions. Prisons were opened, crowds stormed arms depots, and the country was abandoned to anarchy and gang rule. Lubonja has chosen to tell this incredible story through a narrative technique that operates on two levels: a third-person narrator, who describes the large-scale events that made international headlines, and the narrative of Fatos Qorri, the author's alter ego, who describes his own dramatic experiences in a personal diary. The book begins with the synopsis of a novel entitled The Sugar Boat that Fatos Qorri intends to write about the spread of a small pyramid scheme luring people to invest supposedly in a sugar business. However, as the major pyramids collapse, real events overtake anything he has imagined, and Fatos Qorri finds himself in the midst of a real-life tragedy.

Fatos Lubonja is a writer and editor of the quarterly journal Përpjekja [Endeavor], a representative of the Forum for Democracy, and a leading figure in Albania's political life. At twenty three, Lubonja was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for "agitation and propaganda" after police found his diaries, which contained criticisms of Enver Hoxha. He was later re- sentenced without trail and spent a total of 17 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He was released in 1991. Lubonja's first book in English, Second Sentence: Inside the Albanian Gulag, was published to great acclaim by I. B. Tauris (2006) followed by False Apocalypse (Istros, 2015). Among his many literary prizes, he received the Alberto Moravia Prize for International Literature in 2002 and the Herder Prize for Literature in 2004 and the Prince Claus Award, 2015.