Bolla by Pajtim Statovci
“What else is writing, I wonder, if not agreeing to everything, hurting yourself, tolerating your own imperfection, walking naked through a crowded square?”
Bolla (2023) by Finnish author Pajtim Statovci explores an illicit love affair in the shadows of war – both internal and external. Winner of Finland’s highest literary honor, The Finlandia Prize, Bolla follows the life of two men, Arsim and Miloš, as they find and lose each other, themselves, and everything they hold dear in this dark, haunting novel.
Pajtim Statovci has personal experience with the Yugoslav Wars. Born to Albanian parents in 1990, he was forced to escape Kosovo with his family when he was only two years old. While he grew up in Finland and writes in Finnish, his works are set in the Balkans and often concern immigrant protagonists with backgrounds not unlike Statovci’s. In Bolla, Arsim is the embodiment of these literary influences – he is a Kosovo-born Albanian, studying literature and struggling to make it as a writer. His life is contained and his true self carefully concealed. Like many young gay men in predominantly homophobic societies, Arsim gets pressured into entering a passionless marriage with a woman to appease his family. Now, a baby is on the way, which fills him with nothing but dread and discomfort.
As conflicts in Kosovo begin to escalate, Arsim meets a young, Serbian medical student called Miloš. The two soon become inseparable, starting a secret affair that consumes them in a dangerous way – not only are they both men, but one is Albanian and the other is a Serb. Their relationship opens them both to their real selves, and as they lose themselves in one another, a beautiful but urgent love blossoms.
Bolla’s narrative alternates between Arsim’s account, cryptic prose penned by Miloš, and the story of bolla itself, a mythical, fire-breathing serpent that’s born of a deal between God and the Devil, and that each year on a specific day is allowed to leave its cave, when it opens its eyes and devours anyone in its sight. The bolla forms a central motif within the novel, as it winds itself eearily around the story of the two men, promising hope and snatching it away just like its own freedom.
When Albanians begin to die under the hands of Serbians, Arsim and his family are forced into exile to an unnamed country, while Miloš enlists as a soldier out of rage over losing his love. Their parting is felt as an acute pain by both, which Miloš describes best:
“I hated what I imagined you doing next, packing up your belongings at my apartment, a sour burning in your throat, and closing the door behind you leaving everything we once had locked behind it, every confession, all that deranged passion, and without exception everything I'd thought was eternal was drowned out in the sound of the slamming door and the steps echoing through the stairwell that no longer belonged to either of us.”
As the narrative winds around time and space, we see the men unravelling in different ways. Miloš loses himself in war, while Arsim becomes incarcerated and eventually deported as a result of a relationship with a male minor. In their own personal undoings, we get an insight to the deepest and darkest depths of humanity, and the ways in which conflict leaves everyone its victim, no matter which side you’re on.
Bolla is about wars within and wars without. The backdrop of Arsim and Miloš’ relationship mimics their internal wars, with fear, shame, cultural alienation, enforced separation, and the persistence of trauma. While the story is dark and devastating, Statovci’s prose elevates the men’s suffering to literary heights. He keenly observes the dehumanising effects of trauma, shame and fear, and how the after-effects of war such as these pervade every corner of its victims’ world.
Whether it’s loneliness:
“Loneliness peels you out of your skin, cuts out your tongue, and abandons you in a stale, locked room to slowly evaporate.”
Desperation:
“I don't know of anything more aggravating than the belly flop that follows when you realize you're prepared to do anything, say anything at all to retrieve just a fraction of what was once so abundant.”
Or reckoning with personal failures:
“Isn't it strange how—again and again, as if to humiliate themselves—people fool themselves into thinking they can get time back somehow? How time only becomes important once it has passed?”
Statovci carves out a harrowing but meaningful story, peeling back unending layers of evil, only to arrive at a truth that isn’t pretty, but is raw and real.
By the book’s end, we come to understand that the only way to negotiate with the past is by leaving behind any hopes or anticipation of the future, and instead coming to terms with the impossible ugliness of reality. After all, “if everybody got what they wanted, would there even be a word to describe desire?”
Fruzsina Gál is an aspiring writer and book reviewer from Hungary, currently residing in Naarm/Melbourne. She has been a reader all her life, and she finds unexplainable joy in forcing literary revelations into the hands of friends, family, and strangers. When she's not reading or writing, she likes to even out her nerdy side by doing martial arts or going for hikes. You can find her online at fruzsinagal.com.