I have spent a great part of today feeling intellectually smug after reading the news that Ismail Kadare has won the inaugural international Booker prize.

The reason I am feeling smug is that the newspaper stories were full of how the list of nominations was full of international giants of literature like John Updike, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Muriel Spark but the prize went to the relatively unknown Albanian writer – but for me Kadare is not obscure at all.

By accident I have read more of his books than all the others on the list put together (except for Updike). I say by accident because I would never have thought to read his books, and would never have even heard of him, had I not received The Concert as a birthday present from one of my old members of staff about 10 years ago.

I remember opening the gift, looking pleased, but thinking ‘who the hell is this?’ and then later finding that it was a really special book. I even went out and got myself Broken April on the back of that.

All I can remember about The Concert is that it was about politics on a human scale but with Chairman Mao and Enver Hoxha always present in the background. At the time it had quite a mind-expanding effect on me as Albania was such a closed book to us over here it could have been another planet and yet the characters in the book, with their absolutley recognisable ambitions and worries helped me to realise that people are basically the same everywhere. I can also rememeber that it was a much easier read than it appears.

I think it might be time to re-read it now that he is the man of the moment.

An afterthought though: should I really feel smug about having never read anything by Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, Gunther Grass, Ian McEwan, Philip Roth or Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Actually, I may have read something by Roth, but I don’t have anything on my shelves by him. Maybe I should get out less.