I love HN! Thanks for the explanation. I'm very glad this isn't real, it really gave me the creeps. :) I'm actually just halfway through "A concise history of

I love HN! Thanks for the explanation. I'm very glad this isn't real, it really gave me the creeps. :) I'm actually just halfway through "A concise history of Albania" by Fischer and Schmitt, so I just got past the Ottoman Empire in that. Most definitely not a historian of course. :D But indeed none of this shows up there. Although for the record, in the book I mentioned Kadare describes the areas between Arnavutluk and the capital of the empire (a lot of the book happens on this trajectory). And yeah, none of the Albanians, in Albania or outside, that I've talked to ever had any such problems. Although a lot of them do suffer from what looks a lot like "aspirational poverty" to me...