Fatos Lubonja is a writer and editor of the quarterly journal Perpjekja [Endeavor], representative of the Forum for Democracy, and a leading figure in Albania's political life. At twenty-three, Lubonja was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for "agitation and propaganda" after police found his diaries, which contained criticisms of Hoxha. He was re- sentenced without trail and spent a total of 17 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement, and was released in 1991. Lubonja‟s first book in English, Second Sentence: Inside the Albanian Gulag, was published to great acclaim by I. B. Tauris in 2006. He is also the author of a number of books which have been translated into Italian, German, English and Polish. Among his many liaterary prizes, he received the Alberto Moravia Prize for International Literature in 2002 and the Herder Prize for Literature in 2004.
