‘Crossing will devour you; this is some fierce, dazzling, and heartbreaking shit’ NoViolet Bulawayo

Bujar’s world is collapsing. His father is dying and his homeland, Albania, bristles with hunger and unrest. When his fearless friend Agim is discovered wearing his mother’s red dress and beaten with his father’s belt, he persuades Bujar that there is no place for them in their country. Desperate for a chance to shape their own lives, they flee.

This is the beginning of a journey across cities, borders and identities, from the bazaars of Tirana to the monuments of Rome and the drag bars of New York. It is also a search through shifting gender and social personae, for permission to leave their pasts behind, for acceptance and love.

Reviews

A strikingly modern narrative where oppression is not just political but lived in the body

Guardian, Best New Translated Fiction

Crossing will devour you; this is some fierce, dazzling, and heartbreaking shit

NoViolet Bulawayo

Mesmerising… beautiful, haunting and brilliant

Attitude Magazine

Crossing is a novel that dazzles and mesmerizes

Yiyun Li

Stunning… a powerful phoenix of a book that rises from the ashes of the previous century

Guardian

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

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

Statovci’s prose is mesmerising

The Tablet

Crossing is full of insights and thought-provoking reflection

The Irish Times

Raw and lyrical

Asymptote Journal

A beautifully tragic and contemporary story, told without concessions. It resonates somehow with any of us who is fighting the double battle of exile and sexual identity. I found it very sincere in its raw, brutal end, where his destiny seems to return to the starting point, home, with a heavy load of life guilt and sorrow, he will remain an exile one way or the other

Djavadi Négar

Statovci’s prose is slyly artful

Observer

The brutal beauty of Crossing comes from its almost cellular understanding of belonging and exclusion, love and cruelty. It is a powerful phoenix of a book that rises from the ashes of the previous century. It speaks to the sins of the fathers, which the children must transcend by crossing to the other side – or perish

Guardian

Profoundly unsettling but beautifully written and translated… just read it, ok? You’ll feel better for having done so

… sad and searching … Statovci uses no magic-realist elements here, and with its stark language, unanswered questions, and unrelenting heartbreak, this may be the more poignant of his powerful novels

Booklist

Crossing arrives at a moment when many of us have grown suspicious of monolithic categories — gay, straight, Finnish, Albanian, man, woman — and have begun to recognize how inadequate such labels are to encompass the reality of individual lives. The novel memorably portrays the pain those labels can cause; it also suggests that we may not be able to live without them

New Yorker

Statovci interweaves traditional folklore and myth into what is a deeply modern story, which criss-crosses countries and cultures, from Albania and Rome to New York

The Calvert Journal

The writing itself is so gorgeous that it’s easy to follow Statovci down uncertain paths

The Red Hook Star-Revue

Immerses readers in contemporary issues of nationalism, borders, identity and shame…

Traveller Magazine

Beguiling… A centrifugal story told with great sensitivity and empathy, highlighting Statovci’s development as a leading voice in modern European literature

Kirkus Reviews