"Crossing will devour you; this is some fierce, dazzling, and heartbreaking s**t" NoViolet Bulawayo "A novel that dazzles and mesmerizes, and the reader, upon finishing, may have the extraordinary sensation that his or her own dreams have been scattered along the journey, beckoning for rereading" Yiyun Li 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 acceptance and love. But faced with marginalization at home and only precarious means of escape and survival, what chance do the young pair have of forging a new life? Pursued by memories of home and echoes of folk tales, they risk losing themselves in the struggle to leave their pasts behind.

"A strikingly modern narrative where oppression is not just political but lived in the body" - Guardian, Best New Translated Fiction

"Stunning... 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" - Guardian

"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

"Crossing is full of insights and thought-provoking reflection" - The Irish Times

"Profoundly unsettling but beautifully written and translated... just read it, ok? You'll feel better for having done so" - Ox

"Mesmerising... beautiful, haunting and brilliant" - Attitude Magazine

"Statovci's prose is mesmerising" - The Tablet

"... 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

"Raw and lyrical... Crossing finds a genuinely touching way to emphasise the urgency of opening up the questions we so often force closed" - Asymptote Journal

"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

"Mesmerising... beautiful, haunting and brilliant" - Attitude Magazine

"-" - Praise for 'My Cat Yugoslavia'

"Widely praised, very good passages... an extraordinary achievement" - Sunday Times

"Statovci's literary gifts are prodigious." - The New York Times Book Review

"Fearless, delicate, beautiful, sad, haunting, and wonderful. A brilliant novel that mesmerizes with both its humanity and its utter uniqueness. A novel you'll be thinking about long after you've turned the last page" - Jeff VanderMeer

"An elegant, allegorical portrait of lives lived at the margin, minorities within minorities in a new land... [My Cat Yugoslavia] is a fine debut, layered with meaning and shades of sorrow" - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A strange, haunting, and utterly original exploration of displacement and desire... a marvel, a remarkable achievement, and a world apart from anything you are likely to read this year" - The New York Times Book Review

"This beautiful debut is about a great many things... Pajtim Statovci is a writer of brilliant originality and power, and his debut novel conveys as few books can what life feels like now" - Garth Greenwell, author of 'What Belongs to You'