The Successor
- 25 Jan 2007
- 9781841958873
- £9.99
- 224 pp
- 129×198mm
- 15 Oct 2009
- 9781847678522
- £7.99
- 224 pp
In a few words
Tyranny in Tirana, a novel from the inaugural Man Booker International Prize winner based on the final days of Enver Hoxha.
In a few words
Tyranny in Tirana, a novel from the inaugural Man Booker International Prize winner based on the final days of Enver Hoxha.
Brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of shadowy fear, rumours and recrimination in Albania. The Successor provides a mesmerically readable parable about the abuse of state power.
One of the most compelling novelists now writing.
Brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of shadowy fear, rumours and recrimination in Albania. The Successor provides a mesmerically readable parable about the abuse of state power.
One of the most compelling novelists now writing.
More about
the book
The Designated Successor was found dead in his bedroom at dawn on December 14.
Did he kill himself or was he murdered?
This question slices through Ismail Kadare’s masterful psychological thriller. As the state insists that the future leader died by his own hand, the rest of the world begins to have doubts. As the tension builds and rumours escalate, Kadare draws us into a nightmarish world controlled by rules no one understands, blending dream and reality to produce a mystery and a thriller that seduces and surprises up to the last page.
More about
the book
The Designated Successor was found dead in his bedroom at dawn on December 14.
Did he kill himself or was he murdered?
This question slices through Ismail Kadare’s masterful psychological thriller. As the state insists that the future leader died by his own hand, the rest of the world begins to have doubts. As the tension builds and rumours escalate, Kadare draws us into a nightmarish world controlled by rules no one understands, blending dream and reality to produce a mystery and a thriller that seduces and surprises up to the last page.
Suffused with the power of thought and feeling. Above all, Kadare creates a haunting sense of the absurd.
From his youthful obsessions with Shakespeare and Homer, Kadare has retained not just a love of mystery and wit and a facility for clear, bleak language, but a sense of the text's own mystery and the impossibility of fully penetrating it... There is certainly nothing run-of-the-mill about Kadare's biting parable of tyranny.
Suffused with the power of thought and feeling. Above all, Kadare creates a haunting sense of the absurd.
From his youthful obsessions with Shakespeare and Homer, Kadare has retained not just a love of mystery and wit and a facility for clear, bleak language, but a sense of the text's own mystery and the impossibility of fully penetrating it... There is certainly nothing run-of-the-mill about Kadare's biting parable of tyranny.
Ismail Kadare
View profileBorn in 1936, Ismail Kadare was Albania’s best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize for ‘a body of work written by an author who has had a truly global impact’. He is the recipient of the highly prestigious 2009 Principe de Asturias de las Letras in Spain. He died in 2024, aged 88.
David Bellos, Director of the Program in Translation at Princeton University, is also the translator of Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual and a winner of the Goncourt Prize for biography. He has translated seven of Ismail Kadare’s novels, and in 2005 was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for his translations of Kadare’s work.
Ismail Kadare
View profileBorn in 1936, Ismail Kadare was Albania’s best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize for ‘a body of work written by an author who has had a truly global impact’. He is the recipient of the highly prestigious 2009 Principe de Asturias de las Letras in Spain. He died in 2024, aged 88.
David Bellos, Director of the Program in Translation at Princeton University, is also the translator of Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual and a winner of the Goncourt Prize for biography. He has translated seven of Ismail Kadare’s novels, and in 2005 was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for his translations of Kadare’s work.
Featured in
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We’re very sorry to hear of the passing of Ismail Kadare. “ A giant of Albanian literature ”, as the Guardian obituary puts it, Kadare’s writing career began under the dictator Enver Hoxha, and his books quickly brought him international acclaim. He spent much of his
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