Crossing by Pajtim Statovci

Crossing

Pajtim Statovci

Bujar feels he was born in the wrong country and in the wrong body. The Crossing is a powerful and sometimes harrowing search for identity, and sometimes just food and shelter, as he travels across Europe and the USA in search of home and happiness.

Extract

I am a twenty-two-year-old man who at times behaves like the men of my imagination: my name could be Anton or Adam or Gideon, whatever pleases my ear at any given moment. I am French of German or Greek, but never Albanian, and I walk in a particular way, the way my father taught me to walk .... At times like this the woman within me burns on a pyre. When I'm sitting at a cafe or restaurant and the waiter brings me the bill and doesn't ask why I'm eating alone, the woman inside me smoulders.

Parallels
  • You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
  • Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa
  • The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
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Violence
Explicit sexual content