Gazmend Kapllani: Once an emigrant, always an emigrant
– Albania
Gazmend Kapllani is an Albanian-born polyglot author, scholar, and journalist. He lived in Athens, Greece for over 20 years (1991–2012), studying philosophy and psychology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and receiving his PhD in political science and history from Panteion University. He was one of the most outspoken journalists in the Greek press regarding migrants and minorities.
He is the author of two collections of poetry in Albanian and four published novels written in Greek and Albanian. His literary work centers on borders, totalitarianism, migration, identity, and how Balkan history has shaped private and public narratives and memories. His books are taught in prestigious universities in Europe, the United States, and Canada and have been the subject of theatrical adaptations and many scholarly essays.
Kapllani’s first best-selling novel, A Short Border Handbook (2006), has been translated and published into 10 languages so far. It has been adapted for the stage by Bornholm Theater in Denmark and The National Theater of the Deaf in Greece. It won the International Literary Prize of the City of Cassino in Italy in 2017. His three other novels, My Name is Europe, The Last Page, and Wrongland, have been published so far in French, Italian, Albanian, Greek, and English; The Last Page was short-listed for the French Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE 2016 and awarded the literary prize of the Salon du Livre des Balkans in Paris, France.
Wrongland was a 2025 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal Finalist, awarded to “the most thought-provoking books, that either illuminate, progress, or redirect thought”; it was adapted for the stage by the Greek theater director Pantelis Flatsousis and performed in Athens, Greece, in 2022.
Since 2012 Kapllani has been living in the United States, where he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and writer-in-residence at Brown University and Wellesley College. He taught creative writing and (Southeastern) European history at Emerson College in Boston, MA (2013–2018). Gazmend Kapllani lives in Chicago, IL, where he directs the Hidai “Eddie” Bregu Endowment in Albanian Studies at DePaul University and the DePaul Albanian and Southeastern
European Studies Program.
Links in English:
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazmend_Kapllani
- In Conversation with Gazmend Kapllani - Asymptote Magazine:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2016/08/10/in-conversation-with-gazmend-kapllani/
- Border Syndrome by Kapka Kasabova – The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/16/short-border-handbook-gazmend-kapllani-review
- A Short Border Handbook, Maya Jaggi – The Indipendent:
https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-short-border-handbook-by-
gazmend-kapllani-trans-annemarie-stantonife-1696906.html
-Wrongland, in Kirkus Review:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gazmend-kapllani/wrongland/