MY CAT YUGOSLAVIA

By Pajtim Statovci

Translated by David Hackston

255 pp. Pantheon Books. $25.95.

Which of a society’s members are extended the privilege of hoping and dreaming? This question lies at the heart of the Kosovo-born Finnish writer Pajtim Statovci’s internationally acclaimed debut, “My Cat Yugoslavia,” a strange, haunting and utterly original exploration of displacement and desire.

Statovci interweaves the stories of Emine, a young Kosovan bride, and her son, Bekim, whom the aftershocks of exile continue to roil three decades after her fateful wedding to his father. Bekim is a studious gay loner isolated by anxiety, sexuality and the struggle of having grown up a refugee in Finland. Despite a childhood history with ophidiophobic nightmares, he buys a boa constrictor and sets it loose in his apartment. The snake takes up residence under his sofa, driving away his few human visitors, and quickly adopts strangely companionable behaviors more befitting a dog than a reptile.

An urgent longing for love belies Bekim’s inscrutability. We find echoes of that same longing in Emine’s girlhood reminiscences. She is a fiercely intelligent daydreamer at odds with her strict and superstitious father. In one of the novel’s most affecting passages, she realizes that the objective of her education has always been to make her a more suitable wife; she has “never heard of a single female politician, a female teacher or lawyer.” Having reconciled that she can no longer allow herself to dream, she wonders what she can hope for instead. Understanding that it can only be a handsome, generous husband, she promptly throws up. Her life is upended by a fleeting roadside encounter with Bajram, a roué from the neighboring village who asks for her hand in marriage on what is essentially a whim.

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Throughout their lives, mother and son share echoing preoccupations with domesticity and sensuality, and are particularly attentive to the world’s tactile and olfactory details. They share, too, a steadfast refusal to give up the truth of their inner selves in the face of violent and violating masculinity.