Podujevo – Helsinki

Writing for Kosovo Online: Muharem Bazdulj, writer and journalist

My last article published here was about David Albahari and he was described in it as the world's most important writer born in Kosovo, since his hometown was Pec. A friend wrote me a message that he liked the text, so he asked me, “And now that Albahari has died, who is the most globally famous and respected living writer born in Kosovo?” I started thinking. Among the more prominent contemporary writers of the Serbian language, there are several born in Kosovo, and among those who write in the Albanian language, there are probably more. However, I cannot think of any, from either of these two groups that realistically has a serious and relevant international reception. I don't speak for a while, and my friend knows me, so he laughs and says,”You're thinking wrong, that writer doesn't write in Serbian or Albanian”. Now I'm even more confused. He laughs even louder and says with a laugh, "My Cat Yugoslavia".

Yes, a light bulb goes on right away, but also a grain of doubt: Was Pajtim Statovci born in Kosovo? Of course, he is, continues my friend, and in Podujevo, of all places. You see, I say, I was convinced that he was born in Finland.

I heard about Pajtim Statovci (born in 1990) a few years ago as one of the most talented young Finnish writers. When he was only two years old, his family left what was then Yugoslavia and settled in Finland. Having arrived at such an early age, it is not surprising that the boy was formed within Finnish culture and the Finnish language. (His story is actually reminiscent of the story of Danica Curcic, one of the best Danish actresses of the younger generation, who was born in Belgrade in 1985, and moved to Copenhagen with her family a year later.) In general, Statovci clearly had a penchant for literature from an early age, since he studied comparative literature at the University of Helsinki, and already in 2014, as a twenty-four-year-old, he published his first novel under the title "Kissani Yugoslavia", which translation from Finnish would be "My Cat Yugoslavia". For this book, he received the most prestigious Finnish award for the first book. An English translation of the book was published three years later in both Great Britain and the USA. In 2018, the book was turned into a successful theater play at the Finnish National Theater in Helsinki.

The book was quite successful in the Anglo-Saxon world, with positive reviews in the "New York Times" and "The Atlantic" for example, and for the "New York Times" it was highly praised by none other than Tea Obreht, a young writer of Serbian origin who became famous writing in the English language. To all interested Serbian readers, the book is probably most accessible in the Croatian translation, since it was also published in Zagreb in 2020.

In 2016, Statovci published his second novel "Crossing", the English translation of which was published in 2019. In the same year, the last novel by Statovci titled "Bolla" was published in the Finnish original. From a Balkan perspective, the novel has elements that could make it controversial in certain circles. The action begins in April 1995 in Pristina. The main character, Arsim, a twenty-four-year-old Albanian is still a student and recently got married. In a cafe, he accidentally meets a young Serb, Milos, and it's mutual love at first sight. And as if everything wasn't already too difficult and complicated at that time and in that place and under those conditions, in two weeks his wife informed him that she was pregnant. However, what binds Arsim and Milos is stronger not only than the initial difficulties but will also stand up to the chaos that occurs when the war on Kosovo begins, the NATO bombing, and what follows.

Finnish is a difficult language that few people here know. It seems to me that most of the things that were published in our country, back in SFRY times, and were translated from Finnish, were translated by one man: Osman Djikic (not the one after whom the street in Palilula is named, but the former Yugoslav Ambassador in Helsinki). This is probably the only reason why "Bolla" has not yet been translated into Serbian because it would fit thematically into many "agendas" for which it is easy to find funding. This does not mean that Statovci is not a good writer. The leitmotifs of his first three books are intertwined and close, suggesting that he is really dealing with his obsessive themes. Be that as it may, there is something strange in the fact that the best contemporary Finnish writer under the age of thirty-five was born in Podujevo. It's weirder and more respectable, I'd say than the celebrity chronicles of Rita Ora and Dua Lipa. Why this "young queer writer" (as "The New Yorker" calls him, the coolest among all the cool magazines in the West that also celebrates Statovci's talent) is relatively little known in his native Kosovo, is possibly a topic for another and different text.