Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Pajtim Statovci (b. 1990) is a Finnish-Kosovan novelist. He moved from Kosovo to Finland with his family when he was two years old. He is currently a Ph.D candidate at the University of Helsinki. His first novel, My Cat Yugoslavia, also published by Pushkin Press, won the prestigious Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize. Crossing won the Toisinkoinen Literature Prize in 2016, and Statovci also won the 2018 Helsinki Writer of the Year Award.A strikingly modern narrative where oppression is not just political but lived in the body
Guardian, Best New Translated Fiction
Reading Pajtim Statovci's fiction is like entering a lucid dream: life and death intertwines in an intimate dance; the nostalgia for the past is akin to the nostalgia for the future. Crossing is a novel that dazzles and mesmerizes, and the reader, upon finishing, may have the extraordinary sensation that his or her own dreams have been scattered along the journey, beckoning for rereading
- Yiyun Li,
Crossing will devour you; this is some fierce, dazzling, and heartbreaking shit
- NoViolet Bulawayo,
Anyone who has ever known what it's like to leave home in pursuit of happiness and belonging will most likely love this tender, beautiful novel as much as I did
- Imbolo Mbue,
Everything, and I mean everything, is threatened with devastation and loss, but Pajtim Statovci's prose, the quality of his seeing and remembering, promises to save an invaluable part for all of us
- Amitava Kumar,
A beautifully tragic and contemporary story, told without concessions. It resonates somehow with any of us who is fighting the double battle of exile and sexual identity. I found it very sincere in its raw, brutal end, where his destiny seems to return to the starting point, home, with a heavy load of life guilt and sorrow, he will remain an exile one way or the other
- Djavadi Négar,
Stunning... The brutal beauty of Crossing comes from its almost cellular understanding of belonging and exclusion, love and cruelty. It is a powerful phoenix of a book that rises from the ashes of the previous century
- Kapka Kassabova, Guardian
Statovci's prose is slyly artful
- Anthony Cummins, Observer
The brutal beauty of Crossing comes from its almost cellular understanding of belonging and exclusion, love and cruelty. It is a powerful phoenix of a book that rises from the ashes of the previous century. It speaks to the sins of the fathers, which the children must transcend by crossing to the other side - or perish
Guardian
Crossing is full of insights and thought-provoking reflection
- Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times
Profoundly unsettling but beautifully written and translated... just read it, ok? You'll feel better for having done so
Ox
Mesmerising... beautiful, haunting and brilliant
Attitude Magazine
Statovci's prose is mesmerising
The Tablet
... sad and searching ... Statovci uses no magic-realist elements here, and with its stark language, unanswered questions, and unrelenting heartbreak, this may be the more poignant of his powerful novels
Booklist
Crossing arrives at a moment when many of us have grown suspicious of monolithic categories -- gay, straight, Finnish, Albanian, man, woman -- and have begun to recognize how inadequate such labels are to encompass the reality of individual lives. The novel memorably portrays the pain those labels can cause; it also suggests that we may not be able to live without them.
- Garth Greenwell, New Yorker
Statovci interweaves traditional folklore and myth into what is a deeply modern story, which criss-crosses countries and cultures, from Albania and Rome to New York
The Calvert Journal
The writing itself is so gorgeous that it's easy to follow Statovci down uncertain paths
The Red Hook Star-Revue
Raw and lyrical... Crossing finds a genuinely touching way to emphasise the urgency of opening up the questions we so often force closed
Asymptote Journal
Immerses readers in contemporary issues of nationalism, borders, identity and shame...
Traveller Magazine
Beguiling... A centrifugal story told with great sensitivity and empathy, highlighting Statovci's development as a leading voice in modern European literature
Kirkus Reviews
Mesmerising... beautiful, haunting and brilliant
Attitude Magazine
-
Praise for 'My Cat Yugoslavia'
Widely praised, very good passages... an extraordinary achievement
Sunday Times
Statovci's literary gifts are prodigious.
The New York Times Book Review
Fearless, delicate, beautiful, sad, haunting, and wonderful. A brilliant novel that mesmerizes with both its humanity and its utter uniqueness. A novel you'll be thinking about long after you've turned the last page
Jeff VanderMeer
An elegant, allegorical portrait of lives lived at the margin, minorities within minorities in a new land... [My Cat Yugoslavia] is a fine debut, layered with meaning and shades of sorrow
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A strange, haunting, and utterly original exploration of displacement and desire... a marvel, a remarkable achievement, and a world apart from anything you are likely to read this year
- Téa Obreht, The New York Times Book Review
This beautiful debut is about a great many things... Pajtim Statovci is a writer of brilliant originality and power, and his debut novel conveys as few books can what life feels like now
Garth Greenwell, author of 'What Belongs to You'