Successor, The (Winner Of The Man Booker Intnl 2005)

Description:
This is 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 - by an author, the 'Wall Street Journal' called 'one of the most compelling novelists now writing in any language'. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? That is the burning question. For the man who died by his own hand, or another's, was in real life 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 he was to assume power, he was found dead. 'The Successor' is simultaneously a mystery novel, an historical novel and a psychological novel. Vintage Kadare, 'The Successor' seamlessly blends dream and reality, legendary past and contemporary history.

Review:
'A writer who maps a whole culture - its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer.' JOHN CAREY 'He has been compared with Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare's is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil.' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY'

Author Biography:
ISMAIL KADARE was born in 1936 in Gjirokaster, in the south of Albania. He studied in Tirana and Moscow, returning to Albania in 1960 after the country broke ties with the Soviet Union. Translations of his novels have since been published in more than forty countries, and in 2005 he became the first winner of the Man Booker International Prize. DAVID BELLOS, a Professor of French and Comparative Literature, is a writer and translator who has translated five of Kadare's novels and was chosen by Kadare to be the winner of the Translator's Man Booker International Prize.