麻豆社

Albania is a small country of just 3 million people. During the last half of the 20th century, it experienced one of the most brutal and isolated dictatorships in history. 25,000 people were executed, murdered, starved to death, and forced into inhumane prisons and labour camps, modelled after Stalin's gulags. An estimated 200,000 people passed through these camps and some 6,000 were executed or died in state custody. The Albanian writer Fatos Lubonja is one of the survivors of the camps. He was arrested at the age of 23 after the authorities found his secret diaries where he criticised the regime. 'Like a Prisoner' has just been published in the UK. It tells the tragic stories of 11 political prisoners the author met during his long incarceration. Fatos Lubonja and the translator, John Hodgson, came to into our studio to speak to Julian Worricker about the book and communism in Albania, who began by asking Fatos first, why he picked those 11 fellow inmates?