Professional Documents
Culture Documents
KatalogUe GazmendKapllani Low
KatalogUe GazmendKapllani Low
International reviews
GUARDIAN
‘Sketched with a light hand and a heavy
heart … Kapllani is at his best on the devas-
tating effects of tyranny and its aftermath,
where Albanians tear the statues down “like
orphaned children robbing the corpse of a
false and terrifying father”. But he is univer-
sally relevant when he talks about the sub-
tleties of the immigrant’s life… One of the
pleasures of this is the author’s honesty, but
one of its shocks is that it exposes a strug-
gle for dignity in a wealthy, multicultural EU.
We think of walls and borders as something
either in the past or in the Middle East. Kapl-
lani brings borders closer to home and ruf-
fles our notions of 21st-century Europe and
the price some pay to live in it.’
INDEPENDENT
‘Kapllani treats the absurdities of national-
ism in the Balkans – and everywhere – with
mischief, wit and insight.’
FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Kapllani’s stories offer a poignant and humane glimpse into the complex life of a
migrant.’
THE TIMES
‘An Albanian passport is no guarantee that the holder will be received with enthu-
siasm at border crossings. As a migrant he can expect to be given a hard time.
In 1991 Kapllani walked to Greece, where he endured fear and loathing from the
Greeks while working long hours at low-grade jobs for survival-level wages. Though
his is a success story - Kapllani is now an eminent journalist and broadcaster in
Greece - he identifies his chronic condition as “border syn-
drome”, a latent state that can become active at any time,
so that he is acutely aware of his difference and remembers
which side of the border he was born on.’
IRISH TIMES
‘It is a telling reminder of how the borders that many of us are
lucky enough to regard as bureaucratic inconvenience often
form unimpeachable barriers and of how the way they are
policed can be ruthless and absurd.’
BOOKSELLER
‘Thought-provoking and blackly comic stuff on what it means
to be an immigrant.’
ATHENS NEWS
‘His is the universal story about those with little opportunity
but with plenty of guts - immigrants, who, abandoning their
meagre existences in their native country … his perspective
articulates the fraught Albanian immigrant experience, as
well as the ever-present humour of this master storyteller.’
I
found myself once more in front of the na-
ked body of a blonde with huge breasts.
I was in front of a sex cinema. I went in.
The first sex cinema of my life. No wait, the
second. The first one was quite eventful, in my
small town in Albania. It was in December of
1990, the day of the grand anti-establishment
protest, when we clashed against the Special
Forces with sticks and stones and drove them
out of town. That night, the town belonged to
us. We were free. Then a part of the male crowd
went towards the only cinema in the town. I
was amongst them. I didn’t know exactly what
was going to happen. When the cinema was
packed, the word “Sex!”, “Sex!”, “Sex!” start-
ed spreading among the crowd, like a signal
between soldiers, a signal of war, or a signal
between prisoners. The huge cinema was so
full of people that they were packed tightly
against each other, like they used to be on the
bus to the beach at summertime. There were
only men there, men of all ages. As if they had
shaken off the taboos of decades from their
shoulders. When the lights went out, there was
absolute silence. A beam of light went on over
our heads, coming from the projection room,
and hit the cinema screen. A couple appeared
on it. She was half-naked, with red hair, eat-
ing a banana. He was caressing her vagina. A
first wave of noise swept through the cinema.
Then there was silence again. She started tak-
ing off her bra. He put her nipples in his mouth.
Then they said something in French. A second
wave of noise was heard. The crowd demand-
ed a translation. There were no subtitles. A
young man with a megaphone, a student of
French probably, did an on the spot transla-
tion. “I’m so horny, I want to penetrate you”,
he said with a weird voice that sounded so