My Cat Yugoslavia
My Cat Yugoslavia tells two parallel stories: about Bekim, a gay immigrant in Finland, and the story of Bekim's young mother in Kosovo. The novel intertwines real events with elements of magical realism while dealing with themes of identity, emigration, and culture.
When I realized the only reason I went to school in the first place was because an illiterate woman had no chance of marrying a decent husband, the bile rose up to the back of my throat and my food no longer tasted of anything.
As someone well respected by the locals in our village, my father assured me that love for the man with the beautiful smile and the stubble that barely showed against the light, the man whom I was to marry at the age of seventeen and who strode along a dirt track winding away from the main road toward a cluster of three houses, that love for that man would come later if it wasn’t there to start with. And as the eldest of seven children, I trusted my father.
- author: Pajtim Statovci
- full title: My Cat Yugoslavia
- genre: literary fiction
- format/type: bookfiction
- country: Kosovo, Finland
- topics: #culture, #family, #emigration
- publisher: Vintage
- publish date: March 20, 2018
- pages: 272
Literary Awards:
- Winner of Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize 2014
My Rating of the Book:
- content: 💙💙💙💙.5
About the Author:
Pajtim Statovci was born in 1990 and moved from Kosovo to Finland with his family when he was two years old. He holds an MA in comparative literature from the University of Helsinki. My Cat Yugoslavia is his first novel; it won the prestigious Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for a debut in the Finnish language.
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