stylistic:tone, linguistic:paraphrasing, information:extraction
Early

At age 11, Kadare read William Shakespeare 's play Macbeth. He recalled years later: "Because I did not yet understand that I could simply purchase it in a bookstore, I copied much of it by hand and took it home. My childhood imagination pushed me to feel like a co-author of the play."

He soon became entranced by literature. At age 12, Kadare wrote his first short stories, which were published in the Pionieri (Pioneer) journal in Tirana, a communist magazine for children. In 1954 he published his first collection of poems, Frymëzime djaloshare (Boyish inspirations). In 1957 he published a poetry collection entitled Ëndërrimet (Dreams).

At 17, Kadare won a poetry contest in Tirana, which allowed him to travel to Moscow to study at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. He studied literature during the Khrushchev era, doing post-graduate work from 1958 to 1960. His training had as its goal for him to become a communist writer and "engineer of human souls", to help construct a culture of the new Albania. In Moscow he met writers united under the banner of Socialist Realism —a style of art characterized by the idealized depiction of revolutionary communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat. Kadare also had the opportunity to read contemporary Western literature, including works by Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ernest Hemingway. He rejected the canons of Socialist Realism and committed himself internally to writing as opposed to dogmatism. He also cultivated contempt for the nomenklatura, an attitude which, he later wrote, was the product of his youthful arrogance rather than of considered political opposition. During his time in the Soviet Union, Kadare published a collection of poetry in Russian, and in 1959 also wrote his first novel, Qyteti pa reklama (The City Without Signs), a critique of socialist careerism in Albania.

Kadare returned home in October 1960 on Albanian orders, before Albania's breaking of political and economic ties with the USSR. He lived for the next 30 years in Tirana, in an apartment which now houses the Ismail Kadare House museum and archives. He worked as a journalist, became editor-in-chief of the literary periodical Les Lettres Albanaises (Albanian Letters; published simultaneously in Albanian and French), and then contributed to the literary review Drita for five years, while embarking on a literary career of his own.

At that time Kadare had a reputation for poetry. In 1961 he published a volume of poetry entitled Shekulli im (My Century). His work was particularly popular with Albanian youth. His future wife Helena, then a schoolgirl, wrote a fan letter to the young writer, which eventually led to their marriage in 1963.

Kadare wrote one of his earliest pieces in the 1960s, a poem entitled "The Princess Argjiro". Locally inspired, the poem transforms the centuries-old myth of the legendary 15th century Princess Argjiro, who was said to have jumped off Gjirokastër Castle along with her child to avoid being captured by the Ottomans. The poem was denounced and an official reader's report was commissioned, which maintained he had committed historical and ideological errors. Kadare was criticized implicitly for disregarding socialist literary principles.

In 1962, Kadare published an excerpt from his first novel as a short story under the title Coffeehouse Days in a communist youth magazine. It was banned immediately after publication, contributing to his reputation for "decadence".

In 1963, at 26 years of age, Kadare published his novel The General of the Dead Army, about an army general and a priest who, 20 years after World War II, are sent to Albania to locate the remains of fallen Italian soldiers and return them to Italy for burial. The novel faced criticism by Albanian literary critics for flouting socialist ideals and for its dark tone. The novel was thus in stark contrast to those of other Albanian writers of the time, who glorified the Communist revolution. The novel inspired three films: Luciano Tovoli 's 1983 The General of the Dead Army (Il generale dell'armata morta) in Italian starring Marcello Mastroianni and Michel Piccoli, Bertrand Tavernier 's 1989 Life and Nothing But (La Vie et rien d'autre) in French starring Philippe Noiret, and Dhimitër Anagnosti 's 1989 The Return of the Dead Army (Kthimi i ushtrisë së vdekur) in Albanian starring Bujar Lako. Though it is his best-known novel, and Kadare viewed it as "good literature", he did not view it as his best work.

In 1964 he wrote Përse mendohen këto male (What are these mountains thinking about?). His next short novel, The Monster (Përbindëshi), published in the literary magazine Nëntori in 1965, was labelled "decadent" and banned upon publication; it was Kadare's second ban.

By the mid-1960s, the cultural censorship thaw of the early part of the decade was over, and conditions changed dramatically. In 1967, Albania launched its own Cultural Revolution. Kadare was exiled for two years along with other Albanian writers to Berat in the countryside, to learn about life alongside the peasants and workers. Two Albanian dramatists were at the time also sentenced to eight years in prison each. Albanian writers and artists encountered indifference from the world outside Albania, which did not speak in their support.