A Cow Gives Birth at Night

Summer 1996: an eight-year-old raised in Finland is sent to his grandfather's farmhouse deep in rural Kosovo. Under strict, unforgiving rules he goes through and sees things he cannot name, and the only comfort lies in daydreams and in the family cow, in which he finds all the beauty and pain of existence. Grown up and now an author, he goes back there with his mother; mistrust and dread of renewed conflict still shape everyday life, and inherited violence keeps drawing him into ever worse trouble. Struggling to put almost unbearable memories into words, he writes letters to his late father, and the rage in them brings back scenes from the past, along with questions of forgiveness, vengeance and whether memory can be trusted.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

277 pages in the original

Genres

Family, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

Kosovo, Finland, 1996

First published

2024 by Otava

Author's age

34 when first published

ISBN

9789511357759 (original)

9780593702338 (Pantheon, United States)

9781037801006 (Hamish Hamilton, Canada)