Gëzim Hajdari was born in 1957 in Lushnje, Albania. In 1992, forced for political reasons to leave his country, he moved to Italy and lived alone in an abandoned building in the town of Frosinone. In 1997, when he received Italy’s prestigious Montale Prize for unpublished poetry, the municipal council offered him a new apartment. Now one of the leading non-Italian poets in Italy, Hajdari writes in both Albanian and Italian. Hajdari has published numerous volumes of poetry, much of which is marked by his experience of exile and isolation.