PositiveForwardHalevi’s story is both clearheaded and very much penned in the spirit of reconciliation. He seeks to strip away misconceptions ... Halevi is guilty of recycling tropes ... But he can also be refreshingly honest ... Halevi is, in writing to the Palestinians, both by design and necessity, making a more compassionate case.
Pajtim Statovci, Trans. by David Hackston
PositiveSlate\"...compelling and altogether beautiful debut ... This image of a talking cat within human society is also a way of examining the displacement and denigration that comes with being a Muslim Kosovar refugee in Western society, and a queer person in a culture with certain sexual and gender norms ... Perhaps because this is a literary debut, Statovci’s magical realism and use of symbolism can sometimes come across as heavy-handed...Still, My Cat Yugoslavia is inventive and playful. It tells us a great deal about what it might feel like to be an outcast twice-over, to be at the bottom of the heap not just in one society but two ... My Cat Yugoslavia’s is also elevated by the quality of the writing (aided, to be sure, by David Hackston’s elegant translation from the original Finnish). There is something truly wonderful about a debut novel where the sentences themselves are as beguiling, the metaphors as imaginative, and the eye for detail as sharp as Statovci’s.\
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
