Musine Kokalari

Musine Kokalari (10 February 1917 – 13 August 1983) was an Albanian prose writer and politician in Albania's pre-communist period. She was the founder of the Social-Democratic Party of Albania in 1943. Kokalari was one of the first published female writers of Albania. After a short involvement in politics during World War II, she was persecuted by the communist regime in Albania, and not allowed to write anymore. She died in poverty and complete isolation.

Musine was born on February 10, 1917, in Adana, southern Turkey. Her grandfather, Hamit Kokalari, had completed his higher studies in theology and philosophy in Turkey and was considered part of the intellectuals of the time in the Gjirokastër area, the region from which he originated. Her father, Reshati, had studied law in Istanbul, where he settled with his family. Musine was the youngest in the family, while she had three other brothers Mumtazi, Vesimi and Hamiti, whom also had a good education, both in the linguistic-literary and legal fields. Three years after her birth, Musine's family returned to Albania and settled in their hometown, Gjirokastër. She grew up among books, music heard on the gramophone and especially fairy tales, stories and traditional Albanian songs, while she also completed a part of primary school in the city. Then she moved to Tirana, near the institute "Motrat Qiriazi" and the high school "Nana Mbretneshë" where she studied until 1937. She achieved excellent results through writings that immediately attracted the attention of personalities of literature, linguistics, philology, ethnography, studies of the folklore of the Albanian intellectual circles with which the young Musine had the opportunity to come in contact.