The Successor

Listed as a 2005 New York Times Notable BookWinner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize“The Successor evokes extremely well the hyperattentiveness produced by a totalitarian regime. . . . Intelligent, rich and fascinating.” —The Globe and Mail “A multi-layered historical novel based on actual events. . . . Kadare writes in lean, understated prose. . . . The Successor is an emotional roller-coaster ride that will haunt readers for a long time afterwards.”–The Winnipeg Free Press“[Kadare is] the best-known Albanian writer of his generation, perhaps of all time, and is one of the most remarkable European novelists of the 20th century. His work is as immense as Balzac’s, as unrelenting in its critique of dictatorship as Orwell’s, and as disturbingly fantastical as Kafka’s. It is an invention as well as a reflection of what it means to be Albanian, and an exploration of both ugliness and the dignity of a small, ancient, oppressed nation. Kadare is perhaps the last “national writer” of European history. . . . With each new work connected to all the others, the Kadarean universe goes on acquiring ever greater self-sufficiency. It adds up to a portrait of an imaginary land – Kadaria, some have called it – with a single, central topic: how to remain human in a world ruled by fear and suspicion. It is a singular, magnificent achievement, and has long been thought worthy of the highest honour.” –The Independent (UK)"Ismail Kadare has done much to educate the west about his native land, and his new novel [The Successor] is a magnificent addition to his menacing, lyrical, darkly funny oeuvre. . . . Of Kadare's many great gifts, perhaps the most powerful is his ability to release the wraiths of that world while staying completely unruffled himself."–The Independent (UK)"[A] gripping, fitfully brilliant new book. . . . It invites us, dares us even, to identify not only with the oppressed or the nobly defiant, but also with those whom force of circumstance has turned into cogs in the machinery of oppression. In doing so it obliges us to look for the sources of terror in our own psyche rather than that of some conveniently ghoulish Other (though it acknowledges the existence of these too)."–The Guardian (UK)"“Kadare's pliant sentences are at once disturbing and funny. . . . [The Successor] valorizes the imagination by arguing that the truth of a man is not always found in what he does or says but in his numinous interior, the place all great literature celebrates.” —The New York Times Book Review"[The Successor] partakes of both fiction and fable, refracted history and bad dream. It draws you in even as it fends you off, and like the very best books, demands that ultimate tribute from the audience: a second reading.”–The Los Angeles Times“Recent Balkan history is reshaped with mordant wit in this wry 2003 parable. . . . A master novelist’s blackest and most bracing report yet from Communist Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"In seven chapters laced with the blackest comedy, Kadare plumbs the souls of those most affected [by the death of The Successor]. . . . Meanwhile, the heart’s ineradicable darkness is exquisitely, painfully, reconfirmed.”–Booklist