The thing about the popular and even lyrical Triana neighborhood is not going. Although the title points to something similar. In fact, the good of Pakhtim Statovci perhaps he did not even consider such a coincidence. Triana's heart points to something very different, to a mutable organ, to a being that, at the same time, Dorian Gray, tries to reconvert into a new canvas on each occasion, from each journey undertaken.
The heart always beats to the sound that each one marks it, beyond the merely physiological. For Bujar to change is to be reborn, to seek new opportunities and to forget among the sum of identities that make up a past as foggy as it is necessary in its opacity ...
After the death of Enver Hoxha and the loss of his father, Bujar grows up in the ruins of communist Albania and his own family. As Albania falls into chaos, Bujar, a lonely teenager, decides to follow his friend, the fearless Agim, on the route of exile. It is the beginning of a long journey, from Tirana to Helsinki, passing through Rome, Madrid, Berlin and New York, but also of an inner odyssey, a flight in search of an elusive identity. How to feel comfortable, both abroad and in your own body?
Bujar continually invents himself, sometimes he is a man and sometimes a woman. It is built like a puzzle from the fragments that you steal from others, from the past of the people you have loved and their names, because you can choose who you want to be, your gender and your city of birth simply by opening your mouth , convinced that no one is obliged to be the person they were born to be.
Pajtim Statovci, a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki, is a young Finnish novelist of Kosovar origin who has been awarded the most prestigious literary awards in his country. His novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages.
You can now buy the novel "The Heart of Tirana", by Pajtim Statovci, here:
