Review: "My Cat Yugoslavia" by Pajtim Statovci

I am at that age where it is not so hard to find published books by writers who are younger than I am. It is a fact that doesn’t bother me so much as it would have when I was younger, but of the two books I have read by authors younger than I am, neither have been what I’d call great (but both are writers outside of the United States, whose works have been translated and were born in 1990). The first book I am referring too was Raphael Montes weak thriller Perfect Days, and this book, My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci might be worse than that. I don’t say that out of bitter jealousy, but because the book I read blew me away by how unspecial and uninteresting it was: treading ground superior writers have done before, and with less skill and narrative flair. The story focuses on two time periods separated by only a few decades. First we meet Bekim, a young university whose life as a closeted Yugoslavian Muslim immigrant in Finland is characterized by misanthropy, isolation and random sex with men he meets in chartrooms, which is shown in the book’s opening and best scene where a fantasy is fulfilled and supplanted by boring reality. This is changed when he meets a talking cat in a gay nightclub, a scene where the book really curdled for me in its Bekim’s sloppy shift in mood and personality.  The other story focuses on Bekim’s mother Emine from 1980 to 2009, where she marries Bajram and starts her family only for it to be slowly chipped away into nothing. These two stories have little congruency, but both are hindered by weak themes and often self-indulgent stretches of self-conscious prose, and the scenes with the cat feel like fourth or fifth rate Murakmi clones: the sheep man he is not. This is a totally underwhelming novel: one I’ve seen before done better and one I’ll most likely forget about pretty soon. 

Rating: 3/5