I enjoyed Crossing but it wasn't really my fave, but I was still excited to try out this new Statovci work and I am so glad I did! This is his best so far in my opinion! Doesn't hurt that I read it right at the time I was really in the book for some bleak literary fiction. I loved the history, the mythology, the hurt. oh man. it was so good. well written, well crafted. It takes a true writer to get readers to feel for such an unlikeable character and have the story resonant so much.

Bolla is, at it’s core, a story of desire, love, acceptance, and the choices we make to pursue those things. We follow Arsim as he attempts to make his own choices in life while also being constantly pushed and pulled in different directions by external forces. The author wonderfully captured the desperation of trying to hold on to something while watching it slip through your fingers. Arsim is up against familial, marital, and societal expectations that often conflict with his own desires. This look into his relationship with Milos, the changing dynamics in Kosovo, and the devastation of war paints a complex and intimate picture of Arsim as a man tormented by what his life is and what it could have been. While it took me a little while to get into the writing style (maybe due to translation) the more I read, the more I enjoyed this story and it’s insights into life and choice and perseverance.

Bolla by Pajtim Statovci explores themes of love, lust, betrayal, selfishness, and memory in a completely original and unique story. Statovci blends, bends, then breaks myth, legend, and law in ways rarely represented in modern literature. In the tradition of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, or more recently John Boyne’s Maurice Swift, the reader witnesses love, betrayal, and penitence in the main character Arsim, an Albanian man living in Kosovo. The term protagonist is used with a grain of salt as we follow the life of this character before, then in the aftermath of war in the troubled region. Bolla is above all else, intriguing, beguiling, at times challenging. Is our narrator a man or a monster? If he seeks redemption, what form could this possibly take? Might his salvation take on a deformed appearance equally matched to his “sins”?

“Bolla” is a story weighed down by war, narrated by a character oppressed and twisted by the violence in his country and heart. There are many negative thoughts and actions throughout the book, and the reader is left to think critically on the actions of the Arsim, and the thoughts of Miloš. As a reader I had to push through the story and found myself disliking Arsim more and more with each failure he endured; I know I am not a reader that enjoys seeing the muck of life without the hope for future beauty.
The writing style was direct and honest for Arsim’s sections, he did not spend much time on self reflection. Miloš’ journal entries were complex, hallucinatory, and poetic. The characters that are real, without softened edges or idealized natures. In the end I wonder if this was satire that I lost in translation. Readers need to do their work and are free to see the characters in whatever light they choose, Statovci writes without prejudice and that is the greatest strength of this author.

Bolla is a work of rare emotion. It introduces us to Arsim in mid-1990s Kosovo who lives in Pristina with his wife, Ajshe. While the region slides into violence, his world is set afire by his secret love affair with Serbian medical student Miloš. As Arsim flees with his young family, their connection is severed and the rupture drives them both down dark paths, apart and then brought together.

The POVs alternate between Arsim and Miloš. We see Arsim in all his desire, darkness, self-loathing and violence. We see Miloš through his broken mind, confronting his past and the horrors of the war he volunteers to participate in, Ajshe, however, remains opaque. She bears Arsim's silence, distance, violence, children and his eventual departure with a general calmness that breaks only at the revelation of the crime which gets him deported back to Kosovo.

The writing is lyrical, feelings running headlong into each other, the mix of humanity, trauma and war creating an intimate experience. It doesn't shy away from the complexity of humanity - the victim of homophobia who is an abusive husband and father, the soldier broken by his actions and what he has witnessed. There is much beauty in the writing and often I found myself rereading sentences, exploring their layered meanings and connections. This a story, movingly told, of the toll of wars, the ones waged in public and the ones waged in the heart and soul.

An outstanding piece of work, tragic at so many levels. War and homosexuality are its two main topics, but the scenarios of loveless marriages, desperate races and lost souls haunt the book and feed its grounding metaphor. Short, accessible, finely expressed, this novel is memorable.

Bolla is a gutting tale of longing and loss, pain and joy, war and displacement. Arsim is an Albanian living and studying in Kosovo with his wife Ajshe in the mid 90's. One day, Arsim meets a Serb named Miloš who is also studying at the University of Pristina and they quickly begin a secret relationship until the outbreak of the war severs their physical connection. As the war continues, Arsim struggles to maintain his relationship with Ajshe and the glimpses we get into Miloš' reality come from sporadic letters. Statovci's narratives are always thought-provoking and I appreciated his use of Albanian mythology woven throughout the novel.