Prior to Dua Lipa, there were three Albanians a layperson might be expected to have heard of: the Catholic saint and Nobel Peace Prize winner Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa), the dictator Enver Hoxha, and the writer and fifteen-time Nobel nominee Ismail Kadare. When the great writer died in Tirana last July at the age of 88, flags went to half-mast across Albania for two days of official mourning. At his state funeral, held in the National Opera Hall, politicians queued up to pay their respects to “Saint Kadare” (as one article in the local press deemed him), the “unwavering standard bearer of Albanianism.” On stage, a spectral erection of drapery and cartoonish gloved hands clasping an oversized rosary evoked the ghost of Mother Teresa blessing the wreath-covered coffin. The pomp was appropriate for a man who was the most significant Albanian cultural figure of all time, and who, through wiliness and ambition as much as talent, was the undisputed state poet of Albania for nearly six decades.…