Agamemnon's Daughter by Ismail Kadare.

It's difficult to find an author who better describes the tightening noose of authoritarianism than Ismail Kadare. His newly translated Agamemnon's Daughter, a novella and two short stories, sticks to this theme. The novella, Agamemnon's Daughter is a companion piece to his novel The Successor. In it, Kadare expresses the doomed-love of his protagonist and the spiraling descent of Albania into a terrifying, claustrophobic socialist-dictatorship led by Enver Hoxha (never named, but referred to as the Guide). The best short story, 'The Blinding Order', has similar themes. In an unnamed Ottoman state, an order is given by the Sultan to blind those accused of using the "evil eye". This idea allows Kadare to express the slippery nature of guilt under tyranny and the impossibility of a defence when accused of a crime which one can neither prove nor disprove. The blinding order makes police and suspect of everyone it governs, raising suspicion and anxiety as neighbours and colleagues are urged to denounce one another. The parallels with Albania during Hoxha's rule are powerful and clear, but there are parallels with societies the world over. Look, for example, at modern-day Britain with its community-reported ASBOs and politicians urging the public to be constantly alert to the threat of terrorism. Kadare's work is tightly-coiled and potent, and deserves a wide audience. [Laurel Wilson]