Пайтим Статовчи — новинки

Vuonna 1996 Suomessa kasvanut poika viettää Kosovossa kesän, jonka eriskummalliset tapahtumat eivät jätä rauhaan. Aikuisena hän matkustaa synnyinseudulleen, sodasta kituvaan maahan, jossa pelko yhä ohjaa ihmisten arkea. Matka pakottaa katsomaan toden ja kuvitellun taa, hajonneiden muistojen ja sairauden pimeään. Minkä kaiken voi antaa anteeksi, entä kostaa? Voiko oikein edes muistaa?

It is April, 1995.

Kosovo is a country on the cusp of a dreadful war. Arsim is twenty-two, newly married, cautious - an Albanian trying to keep his head down and finish his studies in an atmosphere of creeping threat. Until he encounters Milos, a Serb, and begins a life in secret.

Bolla is the story of what happens when passion and history collide - when a relationship, already forbidden and laced with danger, is ripped apart by war and migration, separated by nations and fate.

What happens when you are forced to live a life that is not yours, so far from your desires?

Can the human remain?

From the author of National Book Award finalist Crossing comes an unlikely love story in Kosovo with unpredictable consequences that reverberates throughout a young man's life—a dazzling tale full of fury, tenderness, longing, and lust.

April 1995. Arsim is a twenty-four-year-old, recently married student at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo, keeping his head down to gain a university degree in a time and place deeply hostile to Albanians. In a café he meets a young man named Miloš, a Serb. Before the day is out, everything has changed for both of them, and within a week two milestones erupt in Arsim’s married life: his wife announces her first pregnancy and he begins a life in secret.

After these fevered beginnings, Arsim and Miloš’s unlikely affair is derailed by the outbreak of war, which sends Arsim’s fledgling family abroad and timid Miloš spiraling down a dark path, as depicted through chaotic journal entries. Years later, deported back to Pristina after a spell in prison and now alone and hopeless, Arsim finds himself in a broken reality that makes him completely question his past. What happened to him, to them, exactly? How much can you endure, and forgive?

Entwined with their story is a re-created legend of a demonic serpent, Bolla; it’s an unearthly tale that gives Arsim and Miloš a language through which to reflect on what they once had. With luminous prose and a delicate eye, Pajtim Statovci delivers a relentless novel of desire, destruction, intimacy, and the different fronts of war.

In the devastation of post-Communist Albania, inseparable young friends Bujar and Agim feel trapped: Bujar struggling to come to terms with the loss of his father, Agim facing dangerous realizations about his sexuality and his feelings for Bujar. When shame, guilt, and the ruins of authoritarianism push Bujar and Agim to leave everything behind and flee to Italy, the unfamiliar life of an immigrant and asylum seeker sets Bujar on a path of reinvention. He follows an impulse to remake himself--as a man or woman of infinite nationalities and pasts--the burning desire to be seen and heard spurring a desperate search for a different existence to be seized at any cost. But Bujar's quest for identity and belonging is haunted by the mystery of what happened to Agim--his one, true beloved, who somehow got lost along the way.

Like Statovci's acclaimed debut, My Cat Yugoslavia, Crossing is a powerful and symbolic novel of both unending war and unattainable love, but most of all, of the lies that give stories a singular power.

Kansainvälisen tähtikirjailijan lumoava romaani sokeasta rakkaudesta, sodasta, kodittomuudesta ja kaipauksesta. Arsimilla on vaimo, mutta kun hän tapaa Pristinan yliopistolla lääketiedettä opiskelevan Milosin, hän ei voi kuin ottaa tavaransa ja seurata. Heidän välilleen syttyy kiihkeä suhde, joka jatkuu, kunnes sota ajaa Arsimin perheineen maanpakoon. Kun Arsim vuosia myöhemmin palaa yksin sodan runnomaan Pristinaan, alkaa epätoivoinen etsintä. Mitä Milosille, ja mitä heille, oikein tapahtui? Yhtä aikaa ajaton ja ajankohtainen teos häikäisee kiihkeydellään, fyysisyydellään sekä huimaavalla kielellisellä kauneudellaan. Samalla se on…

I det postkommunistiske Albania oppleves hverdagen som et fengsel for de to nære vennene Bujar og Agim. Bujar har vansker med å forsone seg med farens død, mens Agim har et uavklart forhold til egen seksualitet. De bestemmer seg for å flykte fra hjemlandet, som føles stadig mer fremmed. Ti år senere møter vi en ung mann. Han flykter fra by til by, og skifter ham hver eneste gang – han er villig til å gjøre hva som helst for å få en ny identitet. Men hvor mye må ofres før en har lykkes med å utslette seg selv fullstendig? «Tiranas hjerte» er Pajtim Statovcis andre roman. Gjennom fortellingen om de to albanske flyktningene utforsker forfatteren temaer som identitet og fremmedfølelse.

In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl is married off to a man she hardly knows, and what was meant to be a happy match quickly goes wrong. Shortly thereafter, the country is torn apart by war and she and her family flee to Finland, where her son Bekim grows up to become a social outcast—not just an immigrant in a country suspicious of foreigners but also a gay man in an unaccepting society. Aside from casual hookups, his only companion is a boa constrictor that, improbably (he is terrified of snakes), he lets roam around his apartment.

Then one night, at a gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat, who also moves in with him. It is this witty, charming, manipulative creature who starts Bekim on a journey back to Kosovo to confront his demons and make sense of the magical, cruel, incredible history of his family. And this, in turn, enables Bekim finally to open himself to true love—which he will find in the most unexpected place.

Emine abiellub 1980ndate Jugoslaavias vägivaldse mehega, kellega on kohtunud ainult korra. Sõja alates pagevad nad riigist. Nende poeg Bekim kasvab üles Helsingis. Ta on üksik ja tõrjutud, kuni kohtub baaris pentsiku kassiga, kes viib ta rännakule mineviku häirivatesse soppidesse.
„Minu kass Jugoslaavia” on jutustus lootustest ja illusioonide purunemisest, sõjast ja pagulusest ning identiteedi- ja kuuluvusotsinguist. Teos võitis 2014. aastal Helsingin Sanomate debüüdipreemia.