Retrieved after fifty years of oblivion, the fruits of Zavalani's imposing project are now available to the reading public for the first time.
In November 1940, Zavalani was given a job in the BBC's new Albanian-language service, which he came to head and where he worked until his death in an accident on 19 August 1966. After the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939, Zavalani was interned in northern Italy, from where he escaped with his wife, Selma Zavalani (1915-1995), former lady-in-waiting to Queen Geraldine, via Switzerland to France and then in 1940, with King Zog's party, on into exile in England." In November 1930, after several years of study in Moscow and Leningrad, he left Russia, about which he now had serious misgivings..