Crossing arrives at a moment when many of us have grown suspicious of monolithic categories.

Crossing, in its rejection of fixed notions of identity, has a kind of kinship with recent books by other young queer writers, among them Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl. at its best, longing and rage compressed in a single sentence at once sweepingly plangent and rooted in granular detail. Getting what you want feels like being defeated by triumph the feeling that you would give everything away to go back to the beginning, to revive your story’s origin.“Statovci’s writing. Quote: “What I would understand the least is the nature of desire, the numbness that follows when it’s fulfilled. The writing and translations here are fine, but the unhappiness Buja causes in himself and in every single person he encounters just ceaselessly piles on, despite his glimmers of insight into his own lack of character, and his self-centered actions just get tiring. It is not until the final pages that the reader discovers how and why Bujar and Agim parted.

Along the way, Buja cruelly and purposelessly breaks hearts and even causes a suicide. Landing in Italy alone and gaining asylum and a passport, Bujar then moves on to Germany, Spain, the US, and finally to Finland, in search of contentment that he never allows himself to find. Here, Buja leaves Albania with his only friend Agim, both being confused about whether to present as male or female. ( )Īnother Albanian native is on the move and confused about his gender identity, just like in the author’s first novel My Cat Yugoslavia. I found this novel to be thought-provoking and challenging. The protagonist has to constantly reinvent himself, hoping with each move that he will finally find the acceptance he longs for. This is a novel that explores what being an outsider feels like, whether that of being a foreigner from an undesirable country or someone whose gender and sexuality fall outside of what is accepted, and is even criminalized in some places. New York is difficult, but maybe Finland will be more welcoming? He tries living as a man in Spain and as a woman in Germany, each time with disastrous results. But reaching Italy isn't the solution it first seemed, and as he moves from country to country, he finds that being an Albanian migrant is a hinderance. Bujar's best friend, Amir, has always known what he wanted and now he proposes that the two of them set out for Italy, where they will surely prosper and live their dreams. Growing up in the eighties in Albania is hard enough, but with the death of his father, Bujar's family spins apart.

Crossing statovci