Anita
Likmeta
Born in Durrës, against the backdrop of an Albania still shrouded in the shadows of Enver Hoxha’s communist regime, Anita Likmeta belongs to a generation raised amid the ideological ruins of a dissolving world – and the urgent need to imagine a future beyond the veil of dogma. Her childhood unfolded among the dusty streets and stone houses of Rrubjekë, a rural village in the Albanian hinterland, suspended between the weight of a totalitarian past and the uncertainties of a transition without direction. Language, memory, and identity quickly became the coordinates of her existence: what is lost, what is preserved, what is passed down. Of Jewish and Muslim heritage, she was shaped by a quiet convergence of faiths. Raised by her maternal grandparents – moral and emotional anchors – she inherited a legacy in which Jewish roots had long been silenced and reshaped. On her paternal side, she is the great-granddaughter of Ibrahim Likmetaj Kodra, a recognized figure in 20th-century Albanian and European art, and of Ali Shahini, who took part in the Albanian independence movement of 1912. Her great-grandfather, Muharrem Shaban Likmetaj Kodra, was a businessman and shipowner involved in the gold trade with Italy and closely aligned with the monarchy of King Zog I. On the maternal side, her grandfather Zylyf Lala – an architect and brigadier – and Adem, her paternal grandfather, a theologian, embodied two distinct yet equally solemn understandings of language and public responsibility. It was within this familial landscape that her first worldview began to take shape. But it would be uprooting that transformed it, setting the stage for everything that would follow.
In 1997, Albania descended into chaos: the collapse of institutions, civil unrest, and the implosion of an economy built on illusions. At eleven years old, she crossed the sea—leaving behind not only her homeland, but the entire symbolic system she came from. She arrived in Italy at a time when the word “migrant” still echoed faintly in public discourse, undefined and unexamined. She entered a condition of extreme poverty: her mother, raising three children alone, worked as a seamstress in a small workshop. In this phase, her encounter with the Catholic world proved fundamental—it became one of her first spaces of refuge and learning, helping shape a new sense of belonging. At fifteen, she embraced Catholicism, drawn to its moral architecture and inner language, marking a turning point in her personal journey. Adolescence became a constant process of negotiation between the desire to integrate and the need to preserve her identity. Italy was a terrain for self-confrontation, a language to interpret and eventually claim as her own. Classical studies honed her understanding of the word as the foundation of thought, of language as a tool for grasping reality. This awareness guided her toward an academic path that combined philosophy and literature, in search of the subtle thread that links power, narrative, and truth.
Education
Anita Likmeta began her schooling in Durrës, attending Marie Kaçulini Elementary School, one of the city’s oldest institutions. Simultaneously, she participated in programs at the Palace of Culture, where select children were involved in artistic and cultural activities. From 2004 to 2006, she studied at the Corrado Pani Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome—an experience that sharpened her understanding of language not only as communication but as gesture, presence, and the architecture of reality. In 2011, she spent a year and a half in Paris, in what she describes as a “personal Erasmus.” There she wrote and directed Il paradigma del caos (The Chaos Paradigm), a documentary that explores the intersection of art and social crisis, and the ways in which political upheavals shape the creative process. Her interviews included Ismail Kadare, Kiki Picasso, and Tanino Liberatore. In 2012, she earned a degree in Literature and Philosophy from La Sapienza University in Rome, completing a thesis on relations between Albania and Italy from 1922 to 1943. Her academic work focused on political philosophy, semiotics, and the history of ideologies, with particular attention to the construction of collective memory and the role of language in narrating power. Confronted with a fragmented and directionless cultural landscape, she began to explore the world of digital innovation, identifying it as a new terrain for both analytical inquiry and creative practice. This marked the beginning of her entrepreneurial path, through which she reconceived the digital realm as a space for research and transformation. In 2021, she was named one of Europe’s InspiringFifty role models, as recognized by Corriere della Sera. In 2024, she founded Exegesis Holding, where she serves as CEO and majority shareholder—consolidating a trajectory devoted to the integration of vision, technology, and culture.
Public and Political Engagement
In 2022, Anita Likmeta was invited by Bruno Tabacci, Undersecretary of State in Mario Draghi’s government, to run for office with the civic list Impegno Civico Di Maio. She accepted the invitation, viewing it as an opportunity to create a space for representation for the “new Italians” and to contribute to the national conversation on integration and the role of second-generation immigrants in Italian politics. She ran as the lead candidate in four regions, becoming the first first-generation Albanian in history to stand for a seat in the Italian Parliament. In December of the same year, she joined +Europa, a liberal pro-European party, which she left a year later due to ideological divergences. From 2020 to 2023, she served as Ambassador for Connect Albania, an initiative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) under the United Nations, aimed at strengthening the ties between the Albanian diaspora and their country of origin. Since 2024, she has been involved in International Cultural Policy at the EURO – Europe and Humanism. Western Roots Center, part of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. The center is dedicated to research, program development, and the promotion of academic and cultural initiatives focused on humanism and the singular character of European identity.
Literary Works
For Anita Likmeta, writing is a tool for investigating the relationship between memory, ideology, and identity. Her books do not aim to explain history, but rather to explore how it settles into individual and collective consciousness—leaving traces, erasing others, and subtly redefining what we call reality. In 2024, she published her debut novel, Le favole del comunismo (The Fairy Tales of Communism, Marsilio Editori), a work that delves into the darkest heart of ideology and the ways in which it takes root in the lives of individuals and societies. Set during the Albanian civil war, the novel follows Ariela, a young girl waiting for her mother’s return in a country on the verge of collapse. To survive fear and absence, Ariela retreats into storytelling. Her “fairy tales” are not imaginary—they are real stories, gathered from those who lived through dictatorship, repression, and disillusionment. These are not redemptive narratives; they are the only language left with which to make sense of chaos. Here, childhood is not a refuge but a site of symbolic resistance. Violence remains hidden in details, gestures, silences. Le favole del comunismo challenges the reader to consider what it means to grow up inside an idea—and whether one can ever truly be free of it. The book received numerous accolades, including the Viareggio-Rèpaci International Prize and the Giuseppe Dessì Literary Award. In 2025, she published L’aquila nera (The Black Eagle, Marsilio Editori), a work in which Likmeta intertwines Albania and Italy in a narrative that oscillates between personal memory and historical reconstruction. The book originates from a childhood episode: the discovery, in the summer of 1994, of Italian soldiers’ remains in an olive grove. From that image emerges an inquiry into the Italian occupation of Albania, the individual choices of the soldiers involved, and the legacy left to the generations that followed. If ideology distorts reality in her first novel, here it is History itself that asserts its presence—constant, unresolved. Both books approach the past not as an archive, but as a living structure that continues to shape the present. Her work also appears in Oltre/Përtej, a bilingual anthology of Albanian poets (Besa Muci Editore), mapping a transnational generation shaped by migratory ruptures of the early 1990s—a contribution to the recognition of bilingual voices in contemporary Italian literature. She has written for La Biennale di Venezia and contributes regularly to various international publications.