Bolla

From the author of Crossing—a National Book Award finalist—comes a dazzling tale full of fury, tenderness, longing, and lust.April 1995. Arsim is a twenty-two-year-old, recently married student at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo, keeping his head down to gain a university degree in a time and place deeply hostile to Albanians. In a café he meets a young man named Miloš, a Serb. Before the day is out, everything has changed for both of them, and within a week two milestones erupt in Arsim’s married life: his wife announces her first pregnancy and he begins a life in secret. After these febrile beginnings, Arsim and Miloš’s unlikely affair is derailed by the outbreak of war, which sends Arsim’s fledgling family abroad and timid Miloš spiraling down a dark path. Years later, deported back to Pristina after a spell in prison and now alone and hopeless, Arsim finds himself in a broken...