The Successor is one of those rare books that can be read with equal pleasure by lovers of psychological or analytical writings, and by readers looking for “action.” Written in the form of a thriller, the novel manages in some miraculous way to go to the essence not only of Communism, but of all dictatorships, revealing with unusual psychological finesse how throughout history there are some archetypal dramas that keep repeating themselves, from Greek myths to Macbeth to the history of the Balkans. Here too, Kadare’s most powerful gift resides in inserting a “regional” story within a universal model, in finding mythological equivalents to contemporary events, and in reading the signification of one through the other.

The novel’s plot, a fictionalized version of a political crime that happened in 1981 in Albania, is simple: on the night of December 13 the designated Successor of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha is mysteriously shot dead. From the beginning to the end of the novel, Kadare crafts a successful drama, in which the answer to the questions “Was it suicide or murder? And if it was murder, who was the killer?” shifts—as the genre of the murder mystery demands—from one chapter to the next. But unlike the usual mystery novel, The Successor doesn’t have a “shocking ending.” In fact, the narrator tells the facts as if even he didn’t know the answer. Moreover, the dictator himself, referred to as “the Guide”—an appellative shared by most Communist leaders—doesn’t seem to possess the key to the entire story either, although he obviously is the gray eminence behind the crime.

Kadare’s skill in creating an ambiguous situation that triggers the reader’s curiosity to the maximum matches his genius in going straight to the essence of things, particularly in the scenes involving the Guide before and after the Successor’s death, which reveal the mechanism of power in Communist dictatorships. To begin with, when the Guide summons to his office the Successor’s successor—Hasobeu—he never pronounces the words “Kill him!” though this is what he is getting at. What he says is so vague and ambiguous—he orders Hasobeu to go to the Successor’s house and do “what is to be done,” and, in spite of his confusion, Hasobeu doesn’t dare ask “What?”—that Hasobeu goes twice to the house, wandering around and trying to interpret the Guide’s words. The game of interpreting is present throughout the book whenever the Guide appears, revealing a system in which everything is a sign demanding to be interpreted correctly if one wants to keep his head. But the absurdity is that there are no rules one could follow in order to properly decipher the signs, and any head could fall at any time. Because of the system’s total arbitrariness it seems at times that the Guide himself, although theoretically the one who makes and changes the rules, doesn’t know everything, as if Power secreted itself like a mythological monster mortals cannot touch, but can only surrender to. Thus, Kadare’s numerous comparisons of the Communist regime to a religion aren’t simply metaphors, but deep insights into its power structure. He compares the ties of comradeship forged at the beginning of Communism between those who spilled blood to come to power, with

"the ties of clan and family, because it too was a tie of blood—but with a difference. It wasn’t based on inner blood, the blood in your veins, identical to the blood of your family going back a thousand years, according to genetics, but on the other kind, on outer blood. That’s to say, on the blood of others, blood they had drunkenly spilled in the name of Doctrine."

Trying to decipher the mystery of the Successor’s death, Hasobeu keeps asking himself what did the Guide actually believe?

"Perhaps, like half the population of Tirana, the Guide took him for the killer. Or did he suspect that his minister [i.e., Hasobeu:] had intended to commit murder, but hadn’t managed to do so, seeing as someone else got his bullet in first? Or that the Successor has beaten both his assassins to the wire by pulling the trigger on himself?”

After leading us to believe that Hasobeu is the killer, Kadare implies that in fact he isn’t. But he also tells us that the Guide himself is engulfed in his own guessing game and deciphering of the signs, as if he didn’t know either who the killer was. Indeed, a few pages further we are told that the Guide “didn’t know and never had known, what had really happened at the Successor’s residence on that night of December 13. And since he didn’t know, it could take a thousand years for anyone else to find out.”

At this point, what we have suspected so far is confirmed: no one knows who the killer is. But immediately after this revelation we are led to another possible suspect: we are told that, apart from Hasobeu, the only other individual that seemed to have been implicated is the Architect of the Successor’s house. And then the story suddenly takes a turn, but the move is so subtle that the reader might still believe he is reading a murder mystery, when in fact the novel has become a reflection on art and the condition of the artist.

We know that the Architect had had his own reasons to hate the Successor for having been once publicly humiliated by him. We know that he had thought of punishing him, but when asked by the Successor to remodel his residence, the desire of punishing him by building something ugly is immediately replaced by a much stronger impulse: that of building something of unsurpassed beauty. In a Communist country where almost all buildings were state property and of a monotonous, uniform gray, the Architect has the rare chance of realizing his artistic vocation by building something unique. Indeed, once finished, his work is so beautiful that at the Successor’s party where the Guide himself is present, the gasps of admiration let out by the guests are indirectly saying the unsayable: the Successor’s house is more beautiful even than the Guide’s house!

Kadare’s psychological analysis of the oldest and most common reason for committing a crime—envy—is doubled by another legend, this time a Hungarian one, which narrates a monarch’s revenge on a vassal who not only had the cheek to have a castle built that was finer than his, but he had invited him to the inauguration party. Now, it appears that the Guide had been, after all, the one who had ordered the Successor’s death, because he was jealous of his house. But this hypothesis is, again, undermined in the last chapter written in the voice of the Successor, who speaks from beyond the grave, and we are back to the idea that the enigma remains unsolved. Even the opening of the secret archives after the fall of Communism hasn’t managed to uncover the secret, says the Successor. And if he tried to explain it, there is only one person who could understand him, Lin Biao, who had once been the Successor of Mao Tse-Tung, and whose life ended in circumstances similar to those of the Albanian Successor. No one will ever know what really happened on the night of December 13. Although, right before the end of the novel, the Successor seems to remember how that night, as he was dozing off, he saw his wife—whom the Guide called “Comrade Clytemnestra” after her husband’s death—point a gun at him... But did he really see her or was it just the vision of a man who was falling asleep?

An interesting tale of murder, intrigue and what happens to the upper echelons in a totalitarian state, but I would have liked more notes to put the story in context. It seems like you'd need a good knowledge of Albania and Albanian history to full appreciate this book. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the first novel I have read by this author. I realized part way through that I should have read Agamemnon's daughter first. I am reading it now and my copy has a very interesting preface from the translator and the publisher about the writing of this and several other works and the methods used by Kadare to smuggle them out of Albania and in to France, sometimes a few pages at a time.
The language and tone of the Successor immediately brought Kafka to mind. It felt like reading The Trial for the first time. There is a certain deadpan aspect of the language but underlying absurdity, irony and actual humour. The story is an interesting one and based on a real historical event in 1981 in Albania, a murder of the 'successor' to the then dictator of the communist regime in power in Albania. The book doesn't solve the mystery and the book is fiction, not history, but it is a fascinating glimpse of life in a totalitarian regime. The event is pondered from many points of view, that of the successor's family, his political rivals, the ordinary population, and foreign intelligence agencies. ( )

In between reading The Idiot and the daunting (in size) War and Peace I pulled out The Successor by Kadare and gave it a go. It's a wonderful follow-up to the other book of his, Agamemnon's Daughter.

The Successor is a murder mystery based on the true-life death of Mehmet Shehu, the designated successor to Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha in 1981. Told using different perspectives from the family of the successor, the guide, the architect, the Dr who performed the autopsy, even, the dead successor from his grave, it is a story where uncertainty rules. But then how could anyone expect murder to be a certainty in an isolated totalitarian society? Was it suicide? Was it a politically motivated assassination? Was it murder for revenge? Anyone of these scenarios could be possible. Only the spirit of the successor at the end of the novel can explain what really happened.

Why does it seem that an oppressive society fosters creativity? The architect in The Successor tackles this question. I could definitely hear Kadare's voice in the architect.

Highly recommended. ( )

This is a fascinating story about an Albanian Dictator (the Guide) and his Successor’s controversial death. The story has been summarized already in numerous reviews so I’ll refrain from that.

What is interesting is to see how well the author has captured the omnipresence of a totalitarian regime’s oppression and the lingering threat of “relegation” for those who fail to follow “the Doctrine” of the Party. It is mind control, the rationalization of illogical ideas and/or motives and the destruction of the human being. It is analogous to the fanatical or misguided wing of a religion or corporation or group of people. An illuminating book worth consideration.

While I liked the book, I found it did not thoroughly engage me. Perhaps that is the result of it having been translated into English, through French from Albanian. Did the words capture the intention of the author or were they the technical language of the translator? ( )