My Cat Yugoslavia: A Novel

Kosovo-born Finnish writer Pajtim Statovci’s debut novel begins with a chap called blackhetero-helsinki prowling the internet in search of “fun and games”, continues with a lonely immigrant student getting into a relationship first with a boa constrictor and then a haughty cat he meets in a bar singing along to Cher’s Believe, and ends with a series of ruminations about the violence of men, of memory, of migration. If this sounds whimsical, don’t worry; My Cat Yugoslavia is a striking work about dislocation and estrangement that moves between science fiction, comic fable and trauma narrative without ever settling snugly into any of them.