What draws you to looking at the world from the perspective of these troubled characters? The main character in your second novel Crossing is also a tricky protagonist, a pathological liar (the author Garth Greenwell compared him to Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley). OB: Arsim is a complex character, a person traumatised by circumstance and unable to live openly as queer, who himself goes on to do some terrible things, including beating his wife and children. In the case of Bolla, the story is a metaphor of the novel’s internal struggle, war, lost happiness, living in secret and fear. The fable-like “interludes” or intervening episodes work as metaphors for what happens in the actual story. In all my books, there’s also an entirely fantastical setting. Many of the things that Miloš says he’s done turn out to be false. One even reconstructs traumatic memories in a diary, which is exactly what happens in the novel, too. It’s a place of complete intimacy and solitude, a place where you can reveal your deepest and darkest secrets without having to be afraid of someone knowing them. Writing in a diary is very different from writing a letter, a news article, a research paper, a novel – anything, really, because one never writes in a diary thinking that others will get to read what one writes. I feel like can “let go” easier when I am not restricted by one narrator, or the rules of a single reality. PAJTIM STATOVCI: I do enjoy combining different styles and modes in my work. You used this two-voice structure in your previous novels My Cat Yugoslavia and Crossing as well – what do you find it opens up, in terms of storytelling? OCTAVIA BRIGHT: Pajtim – your latest novel, Bolla, is told in two voices and styles: the conventional narrative voice of Arsim, who is Albanian, and the more impressionistic voice of Miloš, his Serbian lover, whose sections read like they might be diary entries. If you are able, please consider becoming an English PEN member and joining our community of over 1,000 readers and writers. PEN’s members are the backbone of our work, helping us to support international literature, campaign for writers at risk, and advocate for the freedom to write and read. PEN Transmissions is English PEN’s magazine for international and translated voices.

Pajtim Statovci talks to Octavia Bright about tricky protagonists, Albanian mythology and multilingualism.

Crossing pajtim statovci review