Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2019
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the acclaimed author of My Cat Yugoslavia: a stunning, incandescent new novel that speaks to identity, war, exile, love, betrayal, and heartbreak.
The death of Enver Hoxha and the loss of his father leave Bujar growing up in the ruins of Communist Albania and of his own family. Only his fearless best friend Agim - who is facing his own realizations about his gender and sexuality - gives him hope for the future. Together the two decide to leave everything behind and try their luck in Italy. But the struggle to feel at home - in a foreign country and even in one's own body - will have corrosive effects, spurring a dangerous search for new identities.
Steeped in a rich heritage of bewitching Albanian myth and legend, this is a deeply timely and deeply necessary novel about the broken reality for millions worldwide, about identity in all its complex permutations, and the human need to be seen.
"Starred Review. [A] story told with great sensitivity and empathy, highlighting Statovci's development as a leading voice in modern European literature." - Kirkus
"Crossing will devour you; this is some fierce, dazzling, and heartbreaking shit." - NoViolet Bulawayo, author of We Need New Names
"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, author of Behold the Dreamers
"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, author of Where Reasons End
"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, author of Immigrant, Montana
This information about Crossing was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Anna Kurki
Pajtim Statovci was born in Kosovo to Albanian parents in 1990. His family fled the Yugoslav wars and moved to Finland when he was two years old. He holds an MA in comparative literature and is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki. His first book, My Cat Yugoslavia, won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for best debut novel; his second novel, Crossing, was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Bolla was awarded Finland's highest literary honor, the Finlandia Prize. In 2018, he received the Helsinki Writer of the Year Award.
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