Ismail Kadare was an Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. He was a leading international literary figure and intellectual, initially focusing on poetry until he gained international fame with his first novel, The General of the Dead Army.

Kadare is regarded by some as one of the greatest writers and intellectuals of the 20th and 21st centuries, recognized as a universal voice against totalitarianism. Living in Albania during a time of strict censorship, he used clever stratagems to outwit Communist censors who had banned three of his books, employing devices such as parable, myth, fable, folk-tale, allegory, and legend, enriched with double-entendre, allusion, insinuation, satire, and coded messages.

In 1990, Kadare defected to Paris to escape the Communist regime and its Sigurimi secret police. From the 1990s, he was approached by both major political parties in Albania to become a consensual President of the country, but he declined. In 1996, France made him a foreign associate of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, and in 2016, he was a recipient of the Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur.

Kadare was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 15 times. He received numerous accolades, including the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca in 1992, the Herder Prize in 1998, the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005, the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts in 2009, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2015. In 2019, he was awarded the Park Kyong-ni Prize and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2020.

His writing has been likened to that of Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol, George Orwell, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, and Balzac. His works have been published in 45 languages. The New York Times described him as a national figure in Albania comparable in popularity to Mark Twain in the United States, noting that "there is hardly an Albanian household without a Kadare book."

Kadare was married to author Helena Kadare and was the father of United Nations Ambassador and UN General Assembly Vice-president Besiana Kadare. In 2023, he was granted citizenship of Kosovo by President Vjosa Osmani.