Died at the age of 89/ The life and work of academician Rexhep Qosja

2026-04-23 13:09:00, Kulturë CNA

Rexhep Qosja was born in Vuthaj, in the Malësia region, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He completed the first four grades of primary school in Vuthaj, and his high school diploma in Guci. In 1959 he graduated from the Normal School in Prishtina, and in 1960 he enrolled in the Albanian Language and Literature Department of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Prishtina, where he graduated in 1964. In 1967 he was accepted as an assistant at the Institute of Albanology in Prishtina and during the years 1967/68 he specialized in literary science in his third-cycle studies at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade. In 1969 he was elected a scientific associate of the Institute of Albanology in Prishtina.

In 1971, he defended his doctoral thesis on the life and work of Asdreni with the paper "Asdreni, his life and work" in his postgraduate studies at the University of Belgrade. After his doctorate, in 1972, he was elected, once a senior associate and then, a scientific advisor at the Institute of Albanology, as well as an associate professor and an ordinary professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Pristina. He was accepted into the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the 70s. He was director of the Institute of Albanology from 1972 to 1981, long-time head of the Albanian Literature and Language Branch of the Faculty of Philosophy and, during the years 1974-1975, external editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Jeta e Re. In 1989, he was proposed to become the chairman of the Democratic League of Kosovo, but Qosja refused.

After the political changes in 1990 in Albania, Qosja became among the most vocal critics of culture and the political elite as a genealogical derivative of the communist nomenclature.

In the decade before the Kosovo War, he became known as a figure of the Albanian national reality. Politically, he organized the Democratic Forum of Albanian Intellectuals as a counterweight to Ibrahim Rugova's LDK, and in 1998 he went even further, founding the United Democratic Movement (LDB). In this capacity, he participated in the Rambouillet talks in February 1999 as a member of the Albanian delegation. After the war, Qosja participated in the Interim Administrative Council established on December 15, 1999. A year later, on December 16, he resigned from the presidency of the LDB after poor results in the elections of October 28 of that year.

He is the author of over thirty books of studies on literature and literary criticism, artistic prose, stories, novels and dramas, journalism and polemical writings. He has published reviews, observations, articles, essays, treatises and studies in scientific and literary journals, addressing in them specific issues of Albanian literature and literary creativity in general. Some of his works and works have been translated into other languages.

In 2010, the Albanological Institute of Pristina published the complete works in 29 volumes.

Prose

Rexhep Qosja has published several novels: "Death Comes to Me from Such Eyes" (1974), "One Love and Seven Faults" (2003), "Night is Our Day" (2007), "Nobody's Sons" (2010) and The Secrets Told (2020).

In addition to Pristina, the novel "Death Comes to Me Through Such Eyes" was published in 1987 in Tirana, at the initiative of the writer Ismail Kadare, who had read the publication of the Pristina "Rilindja" Publishing House and liked it. Later, Kadare recommended Qosje's novel in France, and it was published there in 1994 with a foreword by Kadare.[9]

In prose, Qosja has also published the story “The Resurrected and Repentant,” which can also be called a novel or a short story. This story is a satire that lashes out at post-war Kosovar politicians.[11] The Secrets Shown is the first omnibus novel in Albanian literature.

Essay

Qosje's essay "The Albanian Issue" was translated and published in France by the Fayard publishing house in 1995.

Drama

Rexhep Qosja is one of the authors who had a great influence on the literary modernity of Albanian drama, its philosophical dimension and psychological depth in the 1970s, along with Teki Dervish and Beqir Musliu. Qosja wrote the plays Beselam pse po më flijojnë, Sfinga e vijelo, and Vdekja e një më trëndeshë, published in 1978 under the joint title "Mite të zhveshura". He began his first play, Sfinga e vijelo, the same year he finished his first novel, "Vdekja më vjen prej syve të