BOOKS FROM KOSOVOBolla
Tags:
Set in Kosovo
Male author
Description:
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. “Devastating in the most beautiful ways. From the first pages you realize that you are in the hands of an absolute artist.” —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby 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.
Reviews:
(4 months ago) |
25 May, 2025
My synopsis: egotistical man uses his dissatisfaction with life as an excuse to beat his wife and children, discard other humans and just be an all-round horrible person.
The actual synopsis of the book mentions a love affair derailed by the advent of war, but even before that there are hints of the protagonist being a complete ***, such as we he (Arsim), unprovoked, snaps at his lover and momentarily despises him. I found nothing remotely close to a love affair in this book - just one man treating the other like a disposable piece of trash. Had war not erupted I think Arsim would have ended up the same, though Milos may not have suffered so badly. I found nothing redeeming in this book, and I don’t recommend it. |
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