Hana Doda is a sworn virgin of the type that Albanians have never heard of: a woman who became a man, changed her mind, and reverted to being a woman again. After 14 years of living as Mark, her cousin, Lila, invited her to emigrate to America. When she did so, she not only had to adapt to a new country and a new culture, she needed also to “learn” how to act and dress like a woman again.

Her story is told with sensitivity and insight by Albanian author Elvira Dones, in the English translation of “Sworn Virgin,” or “Hana,” as it is known to Albanian readers. Dones’ own story is almost as dramatic as that of her protagonist. Raised and educated in Communist Albania, she defected to Switzerland in 1988, eventually bringing her son along with her. During her time in Switzerland she published books and produced documentaries about topics as diverse as the Kosovo war, the sex trafficking of Albanian women in Italy, blood feuds, the lives of sworn virgins in northern Albania, and a semi-autobiographical, fictionalized account of her decision to leave Albania. Dones now lives in San Francisco, where Prishtina Insight asked her to discuss the buzz around “Sworn Virgin.” The book won praise in international media such as the Guardian. “I couldn’t put it down,” reviewer Kapka Kassabova wrote.

“Sworn Virgin” tells the story of the dark side of the Albanian tradition of sworn virgins: one becomes a sworn virgin in order to carry on the family name in the event of no male heirs. It is the only method sanctioned by the so-called Kanun to avoid marriage, and to live a life of respect not extended towards women in traditional, rural, Albanian society. When Hana becomes Mark, she leaves Tirana, her university, her books, her crushes and her dreams for a lonely life of hard labour in the mountains. That’s the price to be paid for refusing to marry the man her dying uncle chose for her.

The story highlights the absurd side of the sworn virgin tradition: a person in skirts is not considered an autonomous being, capable of deciding their own fate. However, put that same person in pants and they can claim the respect of their entire community. While on an interview tour in Albania, TV talkshow host Ilva Tare questioned Dones’ decision to portray Albanian customs in such a condemnatory light. Dones responded: “I don’t think that a writer is an extended hand of the national tourism agency. A writer is someone who shows the wounds of society that he or she has chosen to show.”

She remains just as unabashed about her creative choices in this regard when we talk one Monday morning over Skype. “Why isn’t the same question presented to male writers – both foreign and Albanian – about their sensitivity towards female characters?” Dones asks. “I consider that question very chauvinistic. In this century, people still ask questions like why was this book written from a woman’s perspective, or (and in Albania this question has always been asked, both indirectly and directly), why are you dealing with these ‘strange’ topics?”

In many ways, “Sworn Virgin” comments on the way sex, gender, and identity intertwine. In the US, Hana begins to “relearn” the social cues that signal womanhood: skirts (which she throws across the room in frustration), lipstick (anxiously applied for her first date), styling one’s hair, and flirting in the right way with a man. Her struggle reflects the experiences of a real former sworn virgin, one Dones met after the novel was completed.

“The only ‘Hana’ who regretted her decision was a big discovery. She gave me the runaround for three weeks, but I finally got to interview her,” Dones says. A few years after a rakia-fuelled interview in northern Albania, Dones heard that this “Hana” had moved to the US, and had decided to dress and identify as a woman again.

“She wanted to grow out her hair, to not be a target of the village, and to be a caretaker for her sister’s grandchildren. This woman’s desire for her femininity had nothing to do with sex. She only wanted the dignity of confirming that she was female and a girl, not a lesbian, and she wanted to live with dignity in a city where no one would look at how she’s dressed,” Dones explains.

The politics of gender brought up by the novel are not lost on Dones, but the source of inspiration for the story is her interviews and direct experiences with sworn virgins. “Every time I get asked this question – why women? – my answer is because women are half of this society. My answer is that the Kanun, which we either glorify or reject in the most cannibalistic, murderous, and bloodthirsty way, had a few rules that show us that women were nothing in that family structure.

“When the idea came to me, it wasn’t with a ‘program’ in mind. I was sixteen-and-a-half when two neighbors of mine from northern Albania (the wife was from Shkodra, the husband from Kosovo) showed me a photo from a big wedding in Kosovo. In the middle of the photo, in the midst of the clan, there was this tall, very handsome man – in traditional costume of course. I asked our neighbor, uncle Naim, ‘Is this the man of the house?’ He smiled and said, ‘No, this isn’t the man of the house. She is a sworn virgin,’” recalls Dones.

Hana spends her years as Mark in the mountains of northern Albania, an unforgiving and beautiful landscape that Dones describes with a timeless quality. This respect for the north spills over into her views on the northern “type”, which can easily flirt with the caricature of the typical mountain man (or in this case, woman) as stoic, old-fashioned, and honorable. The character of Hana is clearly built on a combination of the tough, quiet, northern women that Dones met in her university years, as well as a potentially semi-autobiographical love of writing, reading, and poetry.

“When female students from the north, from towns like Dragobia, Kukesi, Puka, and Lezha, came and studied at the Faculty of History and Philology, I noticed that those girls and women behaved differently. They weren’t as loud as us, they weren’t as modern as us, and they weighed their words more carefully.

“In a way I built ‘Hana’ up in my mind, bit by bit, as an act of rebellion – because I thought at that age, how is it possible to make such a decision [becoming a sworn virgin], when you don’t know anything about your life, or the shape your personality will take? That’s why my perspective on the book was on the loneliness faced by these women,” she says.

“Sworn Virgin” suggests that Hana’s emancipation is to be found in choice – the choice to both become a man and to return to being a woman again. However, the question remains whether sworn virginity is really a choice in a world governed by the stiff rules of the Kanun.

Dones posits that sworn virginity is a choice, and, in a certain sense, a revolutionary choice. “From a Western point of view, sworn virginity is almost a kind of enslavement, but it should always be viewed from the historical and cultural context of the tradition. It wasn’t right, but they were given in marriage by their fathers when they were still in the womb, sometimes to men in their 50s.

“They had to wash the feet of every male family member in the house, and eat the leftovers of whatever meals they left behind… In this way, they [sworn virgins] are kind of revolutionary in their own way. With their own reasoning and in their own way they decided to go down that path, by telling their fathers that they would live as men. It was the only way,” Dones says.

Despite the bizarre nature of Hana’s situation to foreign readers, the resilience, imagination, and good humor of her voice, which narrates the novel, has met with high praise. Through her struggles to return to womanhood and femininity, to adapt to both her cousin’s family and to the US, and to possibly find love, a strange, little-known tradition outside of the Albanian-speaking world is humanized and made familiar.

Asked why Hana’s story has resonated so strongly with readers and critics, Dones responds: “That ‘exotic’ part of Albania, it speaks to them from within. The solitude that a woman of this kind experiences maybe this offers a break in perspective from daily life in North America or Europe. I could be wrong, but I think that the book has opened up a window to things that were unknown until then, and I think that’s what makes them interested in the book.”