After these two novels of partisan heroism, Agolli produced also some interesting work, his satirical Splendour and fall of comrade Zylo (, Tirana 1973), which has proved to be his claim to fame. Comrade Zylo is the epitome of the well-meaning but incompetent apparatchik, a director of an obscure government cultural affairs department. His pathetic vanity, his quixotic fervour, his grotesque public behaviour, in short his splendour and fall, are all recorded in ironic detail by his hard-working and more astute subordinate and friend Demkë who serves as a neutral observer. Comrade Zylo is a universal figure, a character to be found in any society or age, and critics have been quick to draw parallels ranging from Daniel Defoe and Nikolay Gogol’s Revizor to Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera's Zert. But it is doubtless the Eastern European reader who will best appreciate all the subtleties of the novel. Splendour and fall of comrade Zylo first appeared in 1972 in the Tirana satirical journal Hosteni () and was published the following year in a monograph form.