The Successor Audiobook By Ismail Kadare cover art

The Successor

A Novel

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The Successor

By: Ismail Kadare
Narrated by: Bernard Setaro Clark
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About this listen

A new novel from the acclaimed winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction.

The Successor 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. The man who died was Mehmet Shehu, the presumed heir to the ailing dictator. The world was so certain that he was next in line that he was known as The Successor. And then, shortly before he was to assume power, he was found dead. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered?

The Successor is simultaneously a page-turning mystery, 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 challenge to the reader to decide, How does one live when nothing is sure? The Successor seamlessly blends dream and reality, legendary past, and contemporary history, and proves again that Kadare stands alongside Mrquez, Canetti, and Auster.

©2003, 2013 Ismail Kadare. English-language translation © 2005 by David Bellos (P)2013 Audible, Inc. Mystery Fiction Witty Emotionally Gripping
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Editorial reviews

Ismail Kadare, whose work is rare to find in English, writes from personal experience about the paranoid 1980s in Communist Albania: an era of government purges, propaganda, and secret police. Historical thriller The Successor swirls with theories, mysteries, and conjecture surrounding its unnamed title character's death by gunshot. Bernard Setaro Clark's performance suits Kadare's simple prose while playing off the tragicomedy of its cast's private interior monologues, so often oppressed along with the truth under a state that abuses its power.
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The Successor is dead! Was it suicide or murder? If murder, by whom? Nothing is as it seems during the investigation in communist Albania.

Political mystery

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The start was good but perhaps more history was needed to place the action in a time line. Was the death the long time dictator?

Not sure what was going on.

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Kadare is simply amazing. His intelligence and the insatiable desire to know make him absolutely lovable as an author. His writing style is exquisite, filled with symbols. The book is worth hearing/reading. The reader was amazing as well.

Kadare is simply amazing.

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And then I loved it. The dehumanizing horror of Communism in Albania. The many seemingly petty relationships among those in the party. I don’t want to spoil …but guilt and envy are truly endless.

I finally got it

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The storyline was captivating. I couldn't put the book down, as the flow of words drew me in like a magnet.

Storyline was great and easy to follow

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