Possibly analysing his own controversial dual role as both a privileged writer and an internal dissident under the Hoxha regime,[4] Kadare uses the figure of the Architect to explore the problem of artistic integrity in such circumstances,[5] and the events of Agamemnon's Daughter are here recounted once again – this time through the eyes of the female protagonist, Suzana – as further evidence that even the most intimate feelings, such as love, may fall victim to political intrigues and the demands of the state, in cases when the individual is continually sacrificed at a more fundamental, systematic level.

As the brightness dwindled, little by little everything began to freeze, to go lifeless, until all the many lamps in the room went dark.The same passage is excerpted by James Lasdun as representative of Kadare's power to chillingly portray fear and "the reptilian consciousness" of dictators.

Lasdun considers The Successor a "gripping, fitfully brilliant" novel, which employs everything "from documentary realism to Kafkaesque fabulism" to depict a world bereaved of heroes, a universe where "everyone is stained, contaminated, implicated" – not excluding the author himself.

[4] Even though branding the translation "clunky", a review by Publishers Weekly believes that the novel reaffirms Kadare's place "with Orwell, Kafka, Kundera and Solzhenitsyn as a major chronicler of oppression".

"[3] Much like Lasdun's and albeit implicitly, Adams' review refers to a well-publicized denouncement of Kadare by the Romanian émigré poet Renata Dumitrascu, who, in the wake of the announcement of the Man Booker International Prize winner in 2005, scathingly described the Albanian author as "an astute chameleon, adroitly playing the rebel here and there to excite the naïve Westerners who were scouting for voices of dissent from the East".

[8] Fundamentally echoing Landus' judgment, Simon Caterson dispenses with this kind of black-and-white reasoning, writing that "even if Kadare was complicit in the Hoxha regime, and there is nothing in this remarkable novel to suggest he was not, it is quite possible that The Successor could not otherwise have been written.