Dhimitër Shuteriqi

His two-volume Çlirimtarët (The Liberators), Tirana 1952 and 1955, the first post-World War II Albanian novel, painted a picture of the squalor and sufferings of the peasants before the "liberation", and also of the rise of class consciousness among them. It helped set the rather sluggish pace of socialist realism in the 1950s.

Shuteriqi attended the secondary school in Korça. He studied at the University of Grenoble and Lyon in France and taught school in Elbasan in 1942–1943. Shuteriqi began writing in the 1930s and was to become an influential literary historian during the socialist period. He was a member of parliament for many years, president of the Albanian League of Writers and Artists (ALWA) from 1950 to 1973, and a member of the Academy of Sciences from 1973. As chairman of the ALWA, he participated in the Albanian Congress of Orthography of 1972 and was one of the signatories. Shuteriqi is remembered for his research in literature, history, and folklore, in particular for his standard histories and anthologies of Albanian literature. Among his works are Shkrimet shqipe në vitet 1332–1850 (Albanian Writing in the Years 1332–1850), Tirana 1976, Autorë dhe tekste (Authors and Texts), Tirana 1977, and Historia e letërsisë shqiptare (History of Albanian Literature), Tirana 1983.

Shuteriqi was also author of prose and poetry. His first poetry was named Kosova and was published in the Kosova newspaper of Albanian community of Constanța, Romania, in 1933. He was inspired by Romanticism (Victor Hugo, Lamartine, De Vigny, Byron, etc.) until 1943 when he switched to Realism, and later Socialist Realism.

Dhimitër Shuteriqi (26 July 1915 ‒ 22 July 2003) was an Albanian scholar, literary historian, and writer. He participated in the anti-fascist National Liberation Movement. After the war he was a member of the People's Assembly and one of the founders and later president of the Albanian League of Writers and Artists. In addition to a series of books and novels, he has published numerous volumes of textbooks, especially those of the History of Albanian Literature for high schools.

Dhimitër S. Shuteriqi was born in Elbasan in a patriotic and intellectual family. His father was Simon Shuteriqi, participant in the Literary Congress of Monastir (1908) and Congress of Elbasan (1909), as well as one of the founders of the Shkolla Normale e Elbasanit.