Shtëpi LajmeNexhmije Zaimi: The Albanian Girl Who Wrote Daughter of the Eagle

Shtëpi LajmeNexhmije Zaimi: The Albanian Girl

Nexhmije Zaimi: The Albanian Girl Who Wrote Daughter of the Eagle

Nexhmije Zaimi refused the veil, left Albania alone and wrote the 1937 memoir Daughter of the Eagle as a Wellesley...

The Italian ocean liner Conte di Savoia at sea during its trials in 1932, the ship Nexhmije Zaimi writes that she sailed on to America — The liner Conte di Savoia during sea trials off Trieste, 1932. In her memoir Nexhmije Zaimi writes that she crossed the Atlantic on this ship. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Shqiptarë të famshëm, Histori & Trashëgimi

Shkruar nga Val Demiri

Nëntor 2, 2026

Ndani

Tabela e Përmbajtjes

12 minuta lexim

Nexhmije Zaimi was a young Albanian woman from a Libohovë family who refused the veil, took a teaching job against her father’s wishes, crossed the Atlantic alone in the mid 1930s, and then, as a freshman at Wellesley College, wrote her life story in English. Her book, Daughter of the Eagle: The Autobiography of an Albanian Girl (New York: Ives Washburn, 1937), was presented by its publisher on the book jacket as the first book written in English by an Albanian of the new generation.

She signed the book Nexhmie Zaimi, and that is the spelling you will find in American libraries. Her life is thinly documented, so this profile sticks to what the memoir, her college’s own newspaper and the press of 1937 actually say, and it tells you plainly where the record stops. She is not Nexhmije Hoxha (born Xhuglini), the wife of communist leader Enver Hoxha, who died in 2020; the two women only share a first name.

Fakte të shpejta

Book: Daughter of the Eagle: The Autobiography of an Albanian Girl, Ives Washburn, New York, 1937, 271 pages (Google Books record).
She wrote it as a first-year student at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she belonged to the class of 1940 (Wellesley College News, February 18, 1937).
Në the memoir she gives her birth year as 1915. A family memorial notice in The New York Times gives May 14, 1917.
Her parents came from Libohovë in southern Albania. She grew up at the state salt works near Vlorë and later lived in Tirana (memoir, page 42).
She died on April 18, 2003, in Santa Barbara, California, according to a notice in The New York Times.
The full 1937 text can be read free on the Internet Archive. An Albanian translation, Bija e shqipes, appeared in Tirana in 2007 (Gurra, Anglisticum Journal, 2013).

Në këtë faqe

Growing Up: Libohovë Roots, a Vlorë Childhood
Leaving for America
Wellesley and the Making of a Book
About the Book
Timeline
Life After the Book
Why Nexhmije Zaimi Matters
What We Do Not Know
Pyetje të shpeshta

Growing Up: Libohovë Roots, a Vlorë Childhood

Everything in this section comes from her own memoir, so read it as her account. She writes that her father, Mustafa Zaimi, and her mother both came from Libohovë, a small town in southern Albania that she places an hour from Gjirokastër (memoir, chapter XII). The family name, she explains, comes from the Zaimat quarter of the town, where her father’s house stood.

She writes that her parents spent the first ten years of their marriage in Greece, where her father’s work took him, and that four children were born in those years. She was the youngest, born in 1915. The family reached Vlorë in 1916.

Her father became one of the government officials running the state salt works on the coast near Vlorë and the village of Nartë, a place she calls Krip (the Albanian word for salt). That is where the book opens, with her sister Hanife’s wedding, seen through the eyes of a six-year-old. (Our guide to Traditat e dasmave në Shqipëri covers many of the same customs.) She also describes the 1920 fighting against Italian forces around Vlorë as a child saw it.

School, a torn veil and a teaching job

Her mother died while she was still a girl, and her father remarried. According to the memoir, she left for high school with her older brother Mehmet and entered a girls’ boarding school in Kavajë run by American teachers, which the Near East Foundation later took over. For the wider story of girls’ schooling in Albania, see our profile of the Qiriazi sisters.

Before she left for that school, while she was at home in Krip, she overheard her father and stepmother discussing a suitor’s family and deciding to put her under the veil. When the black satin veil was handed to her, she writes, she tore at it and threw it out of the window into the rain. She had already warned her sister that she would not accept an engagement while she was in school (memoir, page 182).

At nineteen she talked the Ministry of Education into giving her a teaching post at the government girls’ high school in Tirana, without telling her parents (memoir, page 245).

Leaving for America

While teaching, she gave English lessons on the side and saved every coin. She wrote to two American women she had come to know through a letter-writing contest in her school days. Both wrote back offering her a home and help with her education. She names them in the book as Mrs. Florence S. Duryea and Mrs. Florence MacMahon.

The last chapter is called “Lamtumirë” (farewell). She traveled to Libohovë, where her father told her he would disown her and threatened to have the house surrounded by police. She answered that her visa was ready and her ship, the Italian liner Conte di Savoia, sailed in two weeks (memoir, page 269). She left the house on horseback at dawn for the port of Sarandë and the boat to Italy. Her father, at his morning prayers, wished her a smooth trip.

The memoir does not give the year. Wellesley’s student newspaper reported in February 1937 that she spent a year at a school improving her English before entering the college, and she was a freshman in 1936 to 1937. That points to an arrival around 1935. Later accounts that date her departure to 1937 cannot be right, because by then she was already at Wellesley with a finished manuscript.

Wellesley and the Making of a Book

The Wellesley College News told the story on February 18, 1937. A New York publisher had read her remarks in newspaper interviews and came looking for her. She started the book in the summer and finished it at Wellesley and over her Christmas vacation.

On May 27, 1937, the paper announced that the freshman’s autobiography was published that day, and Hathaway House invited members of the college and their friends to meet her on June 6. The book jacket says she was twenty-two and explains that Nexhmie means “Morning Star.” The Library of Congress catalog entry printed in the 1937 Catalog of Copyright Entries also records her birth year as 1915.

The press noticed. The Chicago Daily Tribune ran a feature on her in July 1937. The Washington Post reported in October that she had returned to Wellesley on a scholarship after earning her expenses the year before by washing dishes. In a syndicated interview that November (EveryWeek Magazine, as printed in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, November 13, 1937) she said she was still a Muslim, that her brother and sister were offended to find themselves in a book, that she was tired of Americans asking whether she would marry Mbreti Zog, and that she meant to go home and work for women’s education.

She did not finish with her class. Wellesley’s 1940 yearbook, the Legenda, lists her under “Ex-1940,” the former members of the class. A 1939 Federal Writers’ Project book on Albanians in Massachusetts says she was by then a student in New York City.

About the Book

Daughter of the Eagle runs to 271 pages në twelve chapters, from “Hanife’s Wedding” to “Lamtumirë.” It covers her childhood at the salt works, the 1920 war, her mother’s death, life under a stepmother, boarding school, the Tirana teaching job and the break with her father. It ends as she rides away from Libohovë. America is not in it.

Kirkus Reviews, in 1937, found no special distinction in the writing but called the book “a shrewd view of the conflict between old and new.” Louis Adamic, the author of The Native’s Return (1934), reviewed it warmly in the Saturday Review of Literature on June 19, 1937. The American Library Association’s Booklist recommended it in February 1938. A British edition followed from Blackie in London in 1938, and The Spectator judged it probably the first autobiography of a modern Albanian woman.

Historians read it with some care. Noel Malcolm, in Rebels, Believers, Survivors (Oxford University Press, 2020, page 255), notes that the style is novelistic, with long dialogue that must have been reconstructed, and doubts it can be classed strictly as autobiography.

Where to find it today: the complete 1937 edition is scanned and free to read on the Internet Archive. The original is out of print, and first editions turn up through used-book dealers. The Albanian translation, Bija e shqipes: autobiografia e një vajze shqiptare, was published by Plejad in Tirana in 2007 (Gurra, Anglisticum Journal, 2013).

Timeline

Viti	Ngjarje	Burimi
1915	Born, by her own account, the youngest of four, during her parents’ years in Greece	Memoir, page 46; Library of Congress entry in the 1937 Catalog of Copyright Entries
1916	Family reaches Vlorë; father works at the state salt works	Memoir, pages 42 to 46
1920	Witnesses the fighting with Italian forces around Vlorë as a small child	Memoir, chapter IV; Saturday Review, June 19, 1937
As a teenager	Boarding school in Kavajë under American teachers; tears up her veil; teaches in Tirana at nineteen	Memoir, chapters X dhe XI
About 1935	Leaves Libohovë for Sarandë, Italy and the United States	Memoir, chapter XII (no year given); Wellesley College News, February 18, 1937
1936	Enters Wellesley College, class of 1940	Wellesley College News, February 18, 1937
May 27, 1937	Daughter of the Eagle published by Ives Washburn	Wellesley College News, May 27, 1937
October 1937	Returns to Wellesley on a scholarship	The Washington Post, October 22, 1937
1938	British edition from Blackie, London	The Spectator, August 12, 1938
1939	Described as a student in New York City	Federal Writers’ Project, The Albanian Struggle in the Old World and New, page 140
February 1, 1940	Marries New York lawyer and theater producer Henry M. Margolis; marriage dissolved 1950; one son	The Biographical Encyclopaedia and Who’s Who of the American Theatre (1966)
1940	Listed as “Ex-1940” in the Wellesley yearbook	Wellesley Legenda, 1940, page 176
April 18, 2003	Dies in Santa Barbara, California	The New York Times paid notice, May 9, 2003
2007	Albanian translation, Bija e shqipes, published in Tirana	Gurra, Anglisticum Journal, 2013

Life After the Book

The documented record thins out after 1940. The entry for Henry M. Margolis in an American reference book (The Biographical Encyclopaedia and Who’s Who of the American Theatre, 1966) records his marriage to her on February 1, 1940, and its end in 1950. Their son is the journalist Eric Margolis, named as her son in a 2013 family notice in The New York Times. He dedicated his book War at the Top of the World to her and to his father.

The New York Times notice of May 9, 2003 called her the first lady of the Albanian-American community, a best-selling author and a journalist, and gave her age as 86. A family memorial notice in the same paper ten years later described her as an OSS member, an activist in Albanian-American affairs and women’s rights, and a New Yorker for more than sixty years.

Most other details come from family accounts: her son’s recollections, printed in the Albanian newspaper Panorama in 2006, and an article posted on his website in 2022 (credited there as originally published by Bexhet Cobani), and summarized in a 2013 paper by Hyreme Gurra of the State University of Tetova. According to these accounts (Margolis, 2022; Gurra, 2013), she studied at Columbia University’s journalism school, worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, helped Albanian refugees in Italy after the war and received an Italian decoration, reported from the Middle East in the early 1950s, interviewed Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan, interpreted in New York’s criminal courts, and moved to Santa Barbara in the 1980s as her eyesight failed. The same paper says Albania’s president awarded her the Order of Mother Teresa on March 8, 2012.

We could not confirm these from independent records. Her name does not appear, under Zaimi or Margolis, in the index of OSS personnel files published by the U.S. National Archives, so her wartime service rests on the family’s account (New York Times memorial notice, 2013; Margolis, 2022). Dielli, the newspaper of Vatra, wrote in May 2026 that she once led the federation and that communist Albania declared her persona non grata in 1986; the article draws on a file about her in the archive of the former State Security service. Several Albanian accounts call her a CNN or Voice of America journalist (for example Gurra, 2013, which names both, and Dielli, 2026, which names CNN); we found no record from either broadcaster. Gurra’s paper also quotes her memory of meeting Fan Noli in Vlorë in 1924.

Why Nexhmije Zaimi Matters

She told an Albanian girl’s story in English, in her own voice, in 1937. Her publisher billed it on the jacket as the first book written in English by a “new” Albanian.
She wrote it at twenty-two, as a college freshman who was washing dishes to pay her way (The Washington Post, October 22, 1937).
She said no three times: to the veil, to any engagement arranged for her, and to her father’s order not to leave. All three scenes are in the memoir.
Louis Adamic reviewed her in the Saturday Review, the American Library Association recommended the book, and a London edition followed within a year.
She kept the women back home in view. In a 1937 interview she said she intended to return to Albania and work on education for women.
Eighty-nine years later, anyone can read her for free. The 1937 edition is on the Internet Archive.

What We Do Not Know

Her exact date and place of birth are unsettled. The memoir says 1915 and places the family in Greece at the time. The family’s 2013 notice says May 14, 1917, in Albania. Noel Malcolm, whose bibliography lists her 2003 obituary in Dielli, says she was born in Preveza and brought up in Tirana. Gurra’s 2013 paper also reports a Preveza birth, citing a grandson’s account. Albanian accounts usually say Libohovë, her parents’ town (for example Gurra, 2013 dhe Margolis, 2022).

The record we could find does not say exactly when she landed in the United States, what she studied after leaving Wellesley, whether she completed a degree, or what her OSS work involved. We found none of her Middle East journalism under her own byline, and no independent list of Vatra officers naming her. We did not find a New York Times review of the book.

If you hold letters, clippings or photographs that could settle any of this, the community would be richer for seeing them. You can also read more about the era she arrived in through our pieces on the Tre valë të emigracionit shqiptar dhe history of Albanians in America.

Pyetje të shpeshta

Who was Nexhmije Zaimi?

Nexhmije Zaimi, who published as Nexhmie Zaimi, was an Albanian woman from a Libohovë family who emigrated alone to the United States in the mid 1930s, studied at Wellesley College, and in 1937 published the English-language memoir Daughter of the Eagle. A New York Times notice records her death in Santa Barbara, California, on April 18, 2003, and calls her an author and journalist.

What is Daughter of the Eagle about?

The book follows her from age six to about twenty: a childhood at the state salt works near Vlorë, the 1920 fighting with Italy, her mother’s death, an American-run girls’ boarding school in Kavajë, her refusal to wear the veil, a teaching job in Tirana, and the final break with her father when she leaves Libohovë for America.

Where was Nexhmije Zaimi born?

Sources disagree. Her parents were from Libohovë in southern Albania, and Albanian accounts usually name that town. Her own memoir says she was born in 1915 while her parents were living in Greece, and historian Noel Malcolm gives Preveza. A family notice in The New York Times says only that she was born in Albania on May 14, 1917.

Is Daughter of the Eagle still available?

Yes. The complete 1937 Ives Washburn edition is scanned and free to read on the Internet Archive. The original printing and the 1938 London edition from Blackie are out of print and appear through used-book dealers. An Albanian translation, Bija e shqipes, was published by Plejad in Tirana in 2007 (Gurra, 2013).

Is Nexhmije Zaimi the same person as Nexhmije Hoxha?

No. Nexhmije Hoxha, born Nexhmije Xhuglini, was the wife of Albania’s communist leader Enver Hoxha and died in Tirana in 2020. Nexhmije Zaimi was a different woman: the Albanian-American author of Daughter of the Eagle, who lived in the United States from the 1930s and died in California in 2003.

Did Nexhmije Zaimi graduate from Wellesley College?

Wellesley’s own records do not show that. The college newspaper identifies her as a member of the class of 1940 during her freshman year, 1936 to 1937, and The Washington Post reported her return on a scholarship in October 1937. The 1940 Wellesley yearbook lists her under “Ex-1940,” meaning former members of the class. Later claims of a degree remain unconfirmed.

Burimet

Lexime të Ngjashme

Autor: Val Demiri

Valbona është redaktore dhe shkrimtare në ALB Connection, ku ajo mbulon njerëzit, bizneset dhe kulturën që formësojnë diasporën shqiptare. E diplomuar në gazetari në Universitetin e Ajovës, puna e saj përfshin profile të komunitetit, histori suksesi dhe reportazhe mbi jetën shqiptare në të gjithë SHBA-në, Evropën dhe më gjerë. Ajo tërhiqet nga historitë që festojnë arritjet e shqiptarëve dhe e mbajnë komunitetin të lidhur përtej kufijve.