"A surreal diaspora odyssey where queer alienation, snake-charming fascists, and a talking cat dissect nationalism's corpse." Pajtim Statovci's My Cat Yugoslavia isn't just autofiction-it's a shapeshifting fever dream of exile, where Balkan ghosts haunt Finnish welfare-state apartments. Bekim, a gay Kosovan refugee, navigates icy Helsinki racism and Grindr hookups with equal dissociation-until he adopts Enver, a chain-smoking, Yugo-nostalgic cat who spouts Titoist zingers like "Democracy is overrated; I miss my military parades". Parallel timelines unravel: Bekim's mother, Emine, survives an oppressive marriage in 1980s Kosovo, her suffocation mirroring her son's existential drift. Statovci weaponizes absurdism like a scalpel. Enver the cat isn't whimsy-he's the id of a lost homeland, licking his paws while critiquing Bekim's assimilation. The boa constrictor? A literalized metaphor for toxic masculinity, seducing Bekim in a gay bar with promises of belonging while coiling tighter. "You taste like loneliness," it hisses—a line that could soundtrack a Lynchian breakup. The twist lies in its doubled displacement: Emine's trauma lives in pickled peppers and silenced screams; Bekim's in Ikea furniture and the cat's condescension. When Enver snarls, "You refugees romanticize oppression," Statovci eviscerates diaspora nostalgia-and the West's voyeurism. Yet for all its bleakness, humor bleeds through: Enver's critique of Finnish fish ("insipid as their socialism") or Bekim teaching the snake to use a bidet.