Albanian Man Booker International Prize winner joins five other stories competing for the £10, 000 Prize

The latest novel from the highly acclaimed prize winning Albanian author Ismail Kadare has made the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The Fall of the Stone City, set in Gjirokaster in 1943, focusses on a moment of invasion from German soldiers and the surprising rebellion that halts them at the mouth of the city.

Whilst the citizens are fearful of a bloody counter-attack, a meeting between the Nazi colonel and a local dignitary lead to the army disappearing from the city. But at what cost has the city been spared? The full shortlist sees diverse themes of history, war and love battling it out for the £10, 000 Prize, to be announced on 20 May.

The prestigious shortlist features authors from Africa, Spain, The Netherlands, Argentina, Croatia and Albania. Both Kadare’s story and Croatian author Daša Drndić’s Trieste, explore the tension and horror of Nazi encounters and their after-effects. Also on the shortlist is a story of the people and animals of Africa, and the limitations they share in Chris Barnard’s Bundu.

Meanwhile love is questioned in Dutch story The Detour, by Gerbrand Bakker, which follows an unfaithful wife who has exiled herself to an isolated farm in Wales, leaving her husband to hire a private detective to trace her.

Andrés Neuman adds some fire to the shortlist with his epic novel Traveller of the Century, which explores a secret affair between the hearts, minds and bodies of two literary translators.

Completing the line-up, Dublinesque sees a Spanish publisher travel to Dublin to hold a funeral for the age of print and honour James Joyce on Bloomsday. Penned by Enrique Vila-Matas, Dublinesque was translated by Rosalind Harvey and Anne McLean, who has won the IFFP twice previously.