The Successor

This book (The Successor), a mystery novel written by Ismail Kadare (the recipient of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005), is said to have been based on an actual event: the death of the designated successor to Alabanian dictator (Enver Honxha). The successor died of a gunshot wound on the night of December 13, 1981. Whether it was suicide or murder is the subject of the re-telling, based on different points of view, of what happened before, during, and after that fateful night – a la Rashomon indeed. The variety of perfectives drawn from the successor’s daughter, the architect, the Guide (Hoxha) and the dead man himself, from the grave, make the sinister portrait of the uncertainty-dominated Albanian society. Highly recommended.

Selected review:

"Had Kadare not won the Man International Booker then this strange, enlightening novel would have been denied us." - Misha Glenny, The Times

"Nothing "happens" in this fable, which comes to resemble Kurosawa's Rashomon as it approaches its denouement, but we are gripped every step of the way. It also recalls Kafka: in the brisk and hallucinatory narrative tone, and in the pervasive obsession with reading the signs -- does a twitch of the Guide's eyebrow indicate a change in political line? But the excellence of this book lies in the uniqueness of Kadare's vision, and in his ability to reflect pulsating human reality in the grip of an invincibly dehumanizing force." - Michael Church, The Independent

{April 11, 2009}