Albania: A Peaceful Country with a Troubled Past

I am delighted to welcome author and friend Helen Matthews to the blog today.  Helen, your book, Girl Out of Sight, is published today, and I believe this is the second edition of your prize-winning suspense thriller, After Leaving the Village, which was first published in 2017. The book was also endorsed by anti-slavery charity, Unseen UK, and won first prize in the opening pages of a novel category at Winchester Writers’ Festival.  It's set in Albania, so tell me more...

According to Border Force statistics, in summer 2022, a majority of economic migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats were found to be Albanians, lured by social media videos promising riches could be made in the UK.

My suspense thriller Girl Out of Sight, set some years earlier in 2016, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Odeta, who leaves her remote village in Albania with a man she believes is her boyfriend, dreaming of a new career in London. At the time I was researching the book, Albania was the top country of origin of trafficking victims to the UK (18% of all cases).

Albania isn’t prosperous, but it’s a peaceful country. Why would people want to leave? I can’t answer this because the society and culture are unknowable for an outsider. Could one of the clues be in Albania’s turbulent past when people were cut off from the modern world for many decades?

For my research, I visited Albania with my son, and the city of Berat was a highlight. Here’s what I discovered:

Berat ‘the city of a thousand windows’ could stand as a metaphor for Albania. Windows can be open or closed like the country’s recent history. Glass can be smashed, churches and monuments torn down – or they can be preserved. Berat’s cultural importance led to the city’s medieval churches, frescoes and historic mosques being largely spared from the atheism campaign under Albania’s communist leader, Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985.

A fortified castle dominates the hilltop, overlooking the modern town. Around two hundred people still live in stone houses enclosed by the citadel’s snaking walls. Eight churches have survived, some hard to detect as their simple facades blend in with surrounding houses, keeping them hidden in plain sight. One church has a mosaic floor and sixteenth century frescoes by Nikola Onufri, son of Albania’s greatest icon painter.

Completing a circuit of the walls and citadel means treading on layers of history – an eighteenth century church built on the foundations of a tenth century one. We visit the Onufri museum to see precious icons and frescoes, but our viewing is cut short by the arrival of the US ambassador. Burly guards take up surveillance positions and order us to shuffle along faster. No hard feelings, though - later on, we bump into the ambassador, leaving the Mangalemi restaurant as we arrive, and he courteously wishes us a good meal.

Berat earned its UNESCO world heritage listing for stunning, preserved Ottoman buildings in the Mangalem quarter. Clustered in rows on the hillside, they gleam white in the sunshine and sparkle when illuminated at night. Café terraces near the river overflow with customers, mainly men, sipping coffee, beer or raki. Families and couples stroll along the promenade. People seem relaxed and at ease.

It wasn’t always so. Back in the late twentieth century, Albania’s people were forced to withdraw from the world. Their communist leader, Enver Hoxha espoused an extreme form of Stalinism where religion was outlawed and people forbidden to travel abroad. Many scars from those times remain: a visible one scored into the side of Mount Shpirag overlooking Berat where, in 1968, the name ENVER was spelled out in rocks and painted white. Citizens couldn’t escape the sight of their leader’s name. When democracy was established in the 1990s, efforts were made to destroy the sign but the rocks proved resistant, even to dynamite. An attempt to burn off the lettering with a flame thrower killed two soldiers. The project was abandoned, waiting for nature to take its course, until a local man hit on the novel solution of switching the first two letters. Now the sign on the mountainside reads NEVER.

As I type these words, my spellchecker suggests I do the same: change ‘Enver’ to ‘never’. If only life were that simple!

about the book… Odeta’s life has shrunk to a daily round of drudgery, running her father’s grocery store in a remote Albanian village. One day, an enigmatic stranger from Tirana turns up, promising her an exciting career in London. Odeta’s life is about to change, but not in the way she expected.

Kate, a journalist, lives on a quiet London street, but her seemingly perfect life is filled with anxiety for her son, Ben. The boy is obsessed with online gaming but struggles to make friends. Kate sets out to create a simpler life for her family, disconnects them from the internet, and tries to build a community on her street.

On a visit to her home village in Wales, Kate is forced to confront a secret from her past. But even greater danger lies where she lives. Perhaps her neighbours are not the friendly community they seem at first glance…

about the author… Helen Matthews writes page-turning psychological suspense novels and is fascinated by the darker side of human nature and how a life can change in an instant. Suspense thriller Girl Out of Sight, a second edition of Winchester prize-winning novel After Leaving the Village comes out this October from Darkstroke Books. Recent novels published by Darkstroke Books are The Girl in the Van, finalist in the 2022 Pageturner Book Award, and Façade (family noir). Her other books include Lies Behind the Ruin and a collection of short stories Brief Encounters.

Born in Cardiff, Helen read English at the University of Liverpool and worked in international development, consultancy, human resources and pensions management. She fled corporate life to work freelance while studying for a Creative Writing MA at Oxford Brookes University. Her stories and flash fiction have been shortlisted and published by Flash 500, 1000K Story, Reflex Press, Artificium and Love Sunday magazine.

She is a keen cyclist, covering long distances if there aren’t any hills, sings in a choir and once appeared on stage at Carnegie Hall, New York in a multi-choir performance. She loves spending time in France. Helen is an Ambassador for the charity, Unseen, which works towards a world without slavery and donates her author talk fees, and a percentage of royalties, to the charity.

You can get the book Here

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