Sacrificed to further a father's blood-soaked career; sacrificed for the common good; sacrificed, then forgotten.

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.

"Kadare brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of shadowy fear, rumours and recrimination in Albania . . . a mesmerically readable parable about the abuse of state power" - * Observer *

"Suffused with the power of thought and feeling . . . Above all, Kadare creates a haunting sense of the absurd" - * Sunday Times *

"Dream and reality melt together, as in Kafka, making it difficult to identify where the nightmares really begin" - * Times *