Song of Kosovo

In a novel that is as witty as it is profound, Chris Gudgeon delivers both the story of a young man coming of age during the Balkan wars of the late 1990s and a meditation on faith, history, and love.

Zavida Zanković’s world is coming undone. Caught up in the insanity of war and the capers of a manic, larger-than-life father, Zavida awaits trial for a dizzying array of charges — Fomenting Treason, Impersonating a Prisoner, Providing Material Support for a Terrorist Organization, Consorting with History. Telling his story to his beautiful court-appointed lawyer — the fallout from the Crnilo Mining Disaster, his relationship to the mythic knight Miloš Obilić, his love affair with the “Red-Haired Angel of the Salivating Dogs” — Zavida picks up the threads of his past to spin an audacious narrative at once hilarious and heartbreaking.

In Song of Kosovo , Chris Gudgeon tells a transcendent tale of some of the darkest moments in recent history. Blurring the distinction between truth and fiction, he compels us to examine both the stories that we tell ourselves and those that we tell others.