A Financial Times Best of Fiction Pick for 2006

Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? That is the burning question. The man who died by his own hand, or another’s, was Mehmet Shehu, the presumed heir to the ailing dictator, Enver Hoxha. 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, a historical novel—based on actual events and buttressed by the author’s private conversations with the son of the real-life Mehmet Shehu—and a psychological novel (How do you live when nothing is sure?). Vintage Kadare, THE SUCCESSOR seamlessly blends dream and reality, legendary past, and contemporary history.