Gjergj Fishta

Who was Gjergj Fishta?

Gjergj Fishta was an Albanian Franciscan friar, poet, rilindas, and a translator. Notably he was the chairman of the commission of the Congress of Monastir, which sanctioned the Albanian alphabet.In 1921 he became the Vice President of the Albanian parliament. In 1937 he completed and published his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís, an epic poem written in Gheg dialect of Albanian. It contains 17,000 lines and is considered the "Albanian Iliad". Gjergj Fishta was the first Albanian candidate for the The Nobel Prize in Literature.