ë

A quiet yet powerful book that tells of the loss of home through war, of pain and loss of language. In this moving debut, the author finds a magnificent voice of her own. The unusual title "ë" represents a letter that holds significant function in the Albanian language, even though it is often not pronounced. As the child of refugees from Kosovo, the narrator is in search of language and voice. She grows up in Germany, attends kindergarten, school, and university, seeking understanding but repeatedly encountering labels, ignorance, and indifference. When the Kosovo War rages in the late 1990s, she experiences it from a safe distance. Yet even in the diaspora, war and death are present—they are just experienced differently than on-site. The novel "ë" tells of the Kosovo War, which is little known in Germany, and reminds us of the suffering of families who have lost their homes, whose murdered relatives were buried anonymously and remain missing or unidentified to this day. A past that cannot fade because it is literally embedded in every fiber of the body is brought to voice by Jehona Kicaj in the truest sense of the word.