レビュー要約

• 流動的な語りと強い感情の振幅が評価されている。読者には不安定な構成が難しく感じられることもあるが、その揺れが亡命者の孤独と自己防衛を表している。

レビュー

• The words flow and you are soon taken to places and witnessing events in the life of the protagonist. The miserable life of a teenager in an Albania in full political transition is described in a Clear and powerful way. The author manages to hypnotise you with line after line and you go on this journey with Bihar the main character. I really enjoyed it and recommend it .

• I've never read a book like this. It's a beautiful, painful look at queer and trans love and living life as a refugee in the often indifferent EU. I read it in a weekend and clutched it to my heart when I finished.

• Another engaging and thought-provoking read, this time in translation from the original Finnish by a young but already award-winning Kosovar-born author. Familiarity with its settings is no prerequisite to appreciating it, but the fact that it takes place in cities including Rome, Tirana and Helsinki, all of which I know to one extent or another, definitely helps. It's also predicated on a purely literary conceit, in this case tying in with the central themes of identity and appearance.

• In some ways it reads like a Greek tragedy. Two boys off on an ill fated and poorly defined journey to find ‘better life’. They stumble. They fail. They set off to cross the sea in a boat. Buca ends up in Italy. Asim disappears. Buca wanders through Italy, New York City, and Helsinki. The journey does not bring happiness into his life. The quest centers on loss of Asim and accepting self identity. Am I a male or female. Is this quest successful? To me, no. At the end of the years long quest Buca returns home. But, home is not home anymore. In sections of the novel story telling teaches not just lessons. They are key to cultural and self affirmation. Through the telling of a story, Buca’s sadness for the loss of Asim, and how he was lost is revealed . Buca never settled on who he is, or what he wanted to be. Rather in the quest, Buca’s action lost his key to happiness. Which was to come out of ‘their’ new for ever life together.

• His story, as Bujar tells it, is unique -- an examination of the search for a home and gender identification, transcending borders. Starting in Albania and wending his way through, among others, Italy USA and Finland, it is almost a tryptik examination of various national attitudes toward Bujar and his gender fluidity. Some is devastating and some humorous, but for the most part, harrowing, and Bujar is not always sympathetic which makes it even more interesting. Sprinkled throughout are fables and tales of the supernatural, casting a mythic dust over Bujar's quest. The writing at times falls a bit flat, but that may be due to the fact that it has been translated from Finnish, a notoriously difficult language to reconcile.

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