Musine Kokalari

She was born in Adana, Turkey, and spent her childhood in Gjirokastër, the fairy-tale city that seemed to her to be flying. She was the first Albanian woman writer, recognised from the very beginning for her high-level art. In her literary and journalistic writings she placed the traditional Albanian woman at the centre and highlighted the need for the emancipation of girls. She was a democratic intellectual, an openly anti-fascist and anti-communist, who believed in freedom of thought and freedom of art. Already during the war she co-founded the Social Democratic Party with other intellectuals. After liberation she fought politically to defend democratic freedoms and political pluralism. For this reason the communist regime imprisoned her at the age of 27. For 16 years she endured unimaginable torture in the dictatorship's prisons and then, in internment, worked in construction, amid hardship, persecution, isolation and surveillance by the State Security. Nevertheless she did not stop her work collecting folklore and carrying out ethnographic, linguistic and other studies. To the end she remained unbending and faithful to her art and to the social-democratic ideal.

This book won the first prize as the best children's book at the 2017 Book Fair.