The Successor

İkinci El - İngilizce

In The Successor Ismail Kadare mines his country's recent history and puts an infamous death into a crucible. In this way, Kadare captures the strangeness of what was Albania's perverse version of an elite community, those close enough to power to be direct psychological captives of its quixotic and ruthless ruler.

The Guide, a literary stand in for Enver Hoxha, Albania's community dictator, is the captor here: his appearances and absences, his cryptic utterances, and most frightening, his silences, all fuel the vital obsession among his inner circle-interpreting favor or disfavor.

This novel is a riff on the mysterious death of Hoxha's designated successor, Mehmet Shehu, a mystery that gripped Albania when he was found shot at his home in Tirana in 1981. Even belief that his death was suicide didn't indicate lack of suspicion, as many believed that it must have been forced in some way.