PODCAST · arts

Peaks of Shala by Rose Wilder Lane (1886 - 1968)

by LibriVox

This book was published in 1923. From the author's own Introduction: "I would not have this book considered too seriously. It is not an attempt to untangle one thread in the Balkan snarl; it is not a study of primitive peoples; it is not a contribution to the world’s knowledge, and I hope no one will read it to improve the mind. It should be read as the adventures in it were lived, with a gayly inquiring mind, a taste for strange peoples and unknown trails, and a delight in the unexpected. Here I give you only what I saw, felt, and most casually learned while adventuring among the tribes in the interior northern Albanian mountains..."Three brave American Zonyas (women) venture into the mountains of Northern Albania at a time not long after the Great War, when the boundaries (and even the right to exist) of the Balkan states were still hotly disputed. The author tells us why: "the people are living as they lived twenty centuries ago, before the Greek or the Roman or the Slav was ever