The incredible bravery of Ismail Kadare

One of two stories in Ismail Kadare's "Agamemnon's Daughter" (a novella & two stories) is The Blinding Order, set in a unnamed Muslim-Christian country where the government orders that anyone with the "evil eye" (whatever that may be, some kind of strange staring that brings ill fortune) be blinded by one of five prescribed methods. As story progresses, we begin to focus on a mixed-religion family in which the son-in-law to be is appointed as a member of the committee that determines who becomes blinded. Obviously this story is a political allegory, very much about life in any oppressive regime but specifically about life in Kadare's Albania, in the mid-80s. Kadare's bravery in writing these works and publishing them (abroad) is simply astounding. Any quibbles I might have about the literary values of the pieces in this collection - and they are very fine if works of literature - pale beside my amazement that anyone would be brave enough to take on a regime, even by indirection. I've written a number of pieces in my life that are critical of the U.S. and the government, but never feared for my life and safety because of this. What would propel a writer to take the risks Kadare took? His works are not as full of life as some of the other Eastern bloc-Soviet fiction of his time - Kundera, most notably, also Aksyomonov (?) author of The Burn - they're not about the underground literary-political society within these Communist countries but are more or a direct attack, though allegory and innuendo, against the regime themselves - in that way more stark, more cold, more brave.