num_pages: 240
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 lifea dazzling tale full of fury tenderness longing and lust. April 1995. Arsim is a 24-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 caf he meets a young man named Milo a Serb. Before the day is out everything has changed for both of them and within a week two milestones erupt in Arsims married life: his wife announces her first pregnancy and he begins a life in secret. After these fevered beginnings Arsim and Milos unlikely affair is derailed by the outbreak of war which sends Arsims fledgling family abroad and timid Milo 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; its an unearthly tale that gives Arsim and Milo 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.
language: Finnish
title: Bolla
publisher: Otava