The afflictive journey of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles through communist Albania

Tess of the d’Urbervilles is the only major novel written by Thomas Hardy to have been translated into the Albanian language and published during Communist Albania. In view of the strict policy of censorship of almost all “regressive’ national and Western literature, for over forty years, and the systematic Party surveillance of Albania’s literary environment, its publication in 1973 constitutes an interesting breakaway. This paper will look into some of the possible reasons behind such a concession, quite possibly related to Hardy’s realistic themes, as well as shed some light on the life of the novel’s Albanian translator Bujar Doko and its editor Eqerem Biba, whose political standing contributed to the novel’s difficult journey through Communist Albania. Furthermore, the paper will present archival documents which confirm that despite the fact that Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles converged with certain socialist realism themes and sustained notions of worldwide internationalism, other political considerations would emerge as decisive for its eventual publication, banning and limited circulation, just a few years after its publication, reconfirming the unpredictability of the cultural and literary environment, as well the frequent disregard of literary merit, historical accuracy or even logic of continuity during Albania’s Communist era.