Welcome to Literary Friction. I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with my co-host, Octavia Bright. Hello, Octavia.

Hi, Carrie. Today, our theme is an emotion. Shame. From Adam and Eve to Hester Pryn to Circe

Lannister, characters and literature have been motivated by it and undone by it. As usual, our theme is

inspired by our guest's book. We are definitely not ashamed

to have him on literary friction. Octavia was kind enough to fly solo for the interview while I was

away. Well done, Octavia. So your first time, wasn't it? It was. How did it? Would you have fun?

I had a lot of fun because Python was wonderful. I missed you terribly and I'd tell you what.

The timing was really challenging for me. Okay. Well, we'll talk more about that perhaps later on, but do you want to

introduce our guests today? I would love to. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Paitim Statovsi,

who joined me on the show. He was born in 1990 and moved from Kosovo to Finland with his family when he was two years

old. He currently lives in Helsinki, where he's studying comparative literature at the University

of Helsinki and screenwriting for film and television at Alto University. His first novel,

My Cat Yugoslavia, was originally published in Finnish in 2014 and is the story of a young gay refugee from the Balkans who now lives in Finland.

His search for meaning in the midst of loneliness leads him to purchase a boa constrictor in spite of his acute fear of snakes

and to befriend a talking cat who he meets in a Helsinki gay bar.

The book was published in English translation in the UK and the US this year,

and Taya Obrecht, writing in the New York Times book review, called it a Marvel, a remarkable achievement

and a world apart from anything you're likely to read this year, which I would heartily agree with.

So on the show today, you'll hear Octavia's interview with Pytim, our discussion of shame more broadly

in the nurture, and then as usual, some book recommendations.

It would be a shame if you didn't stick around and listen.

I just do it now to make you laugh.

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