Bolla by Pajtim Statovci

Bolla by Pajtim Statovci

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 Milos, 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 Milos's unlikely affair is derailed by the outbreak of war, which sends Arsim's fledgling family abroad and timid Milos 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 Milos 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.

PAJTIM STATOVCI was born in Kosovo in 1990 and moved with his family to Finland when he was two years old. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Helsinki. His first book, My Cat Yugoslavia, won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for best debut novel and his second, Crossing, won the Toisinkoinen Literature Price. He received the 2018 Helsinki Writer of the Year Award.

Follow him on Twitter or Instagram @Pajtimstatovci.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593082447
ISBN 10	0593082443
Title	Bolla
Author	Pajtim Statovci
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2022-07-05
Number of pages	240
Prizes	Short-listed for James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2023, Short-listed for Kirkus Prize for Fiction 2021
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.