For many in the West, Albania remains as remote and shadowy as the fictional Syldavia of the Tintin comics. The country came into existence only in 1912, with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Its first ruler, King Zog, was ousted by Mussolini when he invaded in 1939. Hitler used Albania as a springboard for the Nazi invasion of Greece. The national resistance against Italy and Germany was led by the Albanian partisan supremo Enver Hoxha (pronounced ‘Hodger’). After expelling the hated occupiers, in 1946 the artful Hoxha proclaimed himself head of a newborn socialist republic. With his dangerous wife Nexhmije (the ‘Lady Macbeth of the Balkans’) he turned Albania into a self-immolated model of Stalinist planning, where Party purges, summary arrests and show trials were routine.
Muslim-born, Hoxha was at heart an Ottoman dandy in the megalomaniac lineage of Tamburlaine. He uncannily resembled Arthur Daley of Minder fame and was known for his love of the Norman Wisdom films, which cock a snook at factory owners and other agents of capitalist power.
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