Description
A young Kosovar Albanian, Bujar, flees the Balkans for the West around 1991, carrying grief, loyalty, and a fierce need to become someone more than what others demand he be. Told across two time periods, the novel first traces the pressures that fracture his life in Albania—after his father’s death and after his closest friend, Agim, is brutalized for cross-dressing—then follows the consequences of escape as Bujar confronts displacement, shame, and the hard arithmetic of survival. With lyrical intensity and unflinching realism, the story explores identity as something lived and remade, not fixed; it interrogates belonging, masculinity, and the violence that polices difference. In a voice often described as raw and challenging, Pajtim Statovci’s fiction—translated into English by David Hackston—turns the immigrant experience into a searing meditation on loss, rage, and the desperate search for uniqueness.
Available Editions
paperback
Pantheon
Published Jan 1, 2019
273 pages
ISBN: 9781524747497
Reviews
No ratings yet. Be the first!
No written reviews yet.
Details
First Published
2019
Language
eng
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for Crossing by Pajtim Statovci.