Mud Sweeter than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania

Mud Sweeter Than Honey is a collection of oral histories that provide a powerful and unique insight into life in a totalitarian state. The book explores the forty years of Enver Hoxha's ruthless dictatorship in Albania, where citizens were thrown into prisons and forced labor camps for daring to think independently or rebel against the regime.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 10 November 2022
Publisher: Quercus Publishing

An incredibly moving collection of oral histories, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in history. It has been praised by the Telegraph, History Today, and the author of ALBANIA: PORTRAIT OF A COUNTRY IN TRANSITION, Clarissa de Waal.

Albania, an enigmatic and mysterious country, has always been the untold story of the Cold War, the 1989 revolutions, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mud Sweeter Than Honey goes a long way towards putting that right.

After breaking ties with Yugoslavia, the USSR, and then China, Enver Hoxha believed that Albania could become a self-sufficient bastion of communism. However, the consequences of daring to think independently, rebelling against the regime, or trying to escape were often tragic and irreversible.

Mud Sweeter than Honey gives voice to those who lived in Albania during the forty years of Hoxha's ruthless dictatorship. From poets and teachers to shoe-makers and peasant farmers, and many others whose aspirations were brutally crushed in acts of unimaginable repression, this book creates a vivid, dynamic, and often painful picture of this totalitarian state.

Very little emerged from Albania during communist times, but with these personal accounts, Rejmer opens a window onto a terrifying period in the country's history. Mud Sweeter than Honey is not only a gripping work of reportage, but also a necessary and unique portrait of a nation.

With an Introduction by Tony Barber, this book has won the Polityka Passport Prize and the Koscielski Award. It has been translated from the Polish by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones and is a must-read for anyone interested in history.

Weight: 228g
Dimension: 129 x 197 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529411478