[In the following review, Thomson asserts that The Pyramid is not Kadare's best work, commenting that the novel's social commentary is “very bitter, but also abstruse.”]

After half a century of Stalinist dictatorship, Albania is fumbling its way towards capitalism. On his recent visit to this Balkan outpost, Malcolm Rifkind found the Albanian president beaming with gratitude. ‘I would like to thank the British taxpayers for all the help they have given to my country.’ In turn Mr Rifkind was happy to announce the appointment of the first British ambassador to serve in Albania.

Some British taxpayers may not know where Albania is. The country came into existence only in 1913 and candidates for the Albanian crown were bizarre. They numbered Aubrey Herbert (model for John Buchan's Greenmantle) and Lord Inchcape, who gave the embarrassed reply, ‘Where is Albania?’ The current pretender to the throne is Kino Leka. A gawky 6 foot 8 inches tall, he has not returned to Albania since his father, the late King Zog, was expelled by Mussolini in 1939.

Even if the son of Zog returns, it will be many years before Albania shakes off the legacy of Enver Hoxha. A Stalinist in the megalomaniac lineage of Tamerlane, it was Hoxha alone who dragged Albania to political ruin. Curiously, this ex-Muslim bigwig was an amateur Egyptologist. So it is probably no coincidence that Ismail Kadare's latest novel, The Pyramid, lampoons the Albanian dictates as the power-crazed Pharaoh Cheops.

The Pyramid is not the best of this Albanian writer; as a parable about the abuse of power it is caustic, very bitter, but also abstruse. The parallels between ancient Egypt and Stalinist Albania are not glaringly apparent. Cheops orders the construction of a pyramid which takes a lifetime to complete; nameless navvies die like flies and political opponents disappear in the basalt mines. This could as easily be a Saddam Hussein. There is just one (fairly arcane) allusion to Hoxha; the pyramid spawns hundreds of thousands of tiddlers known as bunkers.

Presumably Kadare is talking about the 900,000 pill-boxes which Hoxha built across Albania to foil an imagined NATO invasion. The Pyramid is an insider's book, written by one who has been close to power. Although Kadare himself was never a party member, he did become deputy chairman of a cultural organisation run by Hoxha's wife, the poisonous Nexhmije. In Albania, family connections count as blood; Kadare was accommodated until his novels provoked censorship and he defected to Paris in 1990.

But it was not long before the trappings of Enver Hoxha's own monstrous regime were demolished by the vengeful mob; as the pyramid built by Cheops was desecrated and the royal tombs profaned. This brief tale of pharaoh Cheops/Comrade Enver has no startling insights into the nature of tyranny. But The Pyramid is a fine, creepy read and one can only marvel at how Ismail Kadare managed to write anything under the pressures of so watchful a regime.