A powerful political novel based on the sudden, mysterious death of the man who had been handpicked to succeed the hated Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? That is the burning question. The man who died by his own hand, or another’s, was Mehmet Shehu, the presumed heir to the ailing dictator. So sure was the world that he was next in line, he was known as The Successor.
And then, shortly before Shehu was to assume power, he was found dead. The Successor is simultaneously a mystery novel, a historical novel-based on actual events and buttressed by the author’s private conversations with the son of the real-life Mehmet Shehu, and a psychological novel. How do you live when nothing is sure?
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Kadare writes in a dimension different from the prophetic realism of George Orwell and Arthur Koestler, and darker and perhaps narrower than the prophetic fantasy of Franz Kafka. . . . He has the gift of writing parables of great weight in the lightest of tones.
Man Booker International Prize
Kadare is a writer who maps a whole cultureits history, its passion, its folklore, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer. John Carey
John Carey - Man Booker International Prize
Kadare is a writer who maps a whole culture--its history, its passion, its folklore, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer.
Man Booker International Prize - John Carey
Kadare is a writer who maps a whole cultureits history, its passion, its folklore, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer.