Agamemnon's Daughter - Ismail Kadare; David Bellos (Paperback) 07-02-2008

In his compelling prequel to The Successor, Kadare draws us into a land deprived of choice, a country under a reign of terror. The spellbinding Agamemnon's Daughter was written in Albania in the 1980s and smuggled into France a few pages at a time. It reveals a world where fear is an instrument of power, but the individual survives despite the odds. From the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize comes a searing story of love denied, then shattered under the chilling wheels of the state. Through the impeccably crafted, incisive tale of a thwarted lover's odyssey through a single day, we are given a true sense of how hard it can be to remain human in a world ruled by fear and suspicion.