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. 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. So sure was the world that he was next in line, he was known as The Successor.

And then, shortly before Shehu 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?

Ismail Kadare is the winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, and is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. He is acclaimed worldwide as one of the most important writers of our time. Translations of his novels have been published in more than forty countries. He divides his time between Paris, France, and Tirana, Albania.