Jete Zhitia’s debut novel, Weltenwandel, is a journey through homelands and leads to the constitution of one’s being.

Kosovo, Albania, or Germany? What is called home is often not accompanied by the feeling of being at home. Jete Zhitia explores this discrepancy by embarking on a journey to find her roots. As a 25-year-old Kosovar living in Germany, she moves to the Albanian port city of Durrës, where she begins her search for people, stories, and herself.

Gjirokastra, Elbasan, and Butrint are just a few places that find their way into this book as if from a finely narrated travelogue. Mostly the narrator finds her way there by car, but bicycle tours and hikes are also part of the journey. In between, the focus shifts from the literary space to the souls that fill it. “Keep doing that. In the same way, keep going. Never hide that you are strong.” Then she turned and slowly walked back to her chair. The victory had gone from her body. She was an old woman again. From a distance, she imperiously shooed her son away. – writes the narrator. She describes the numerous encounters with people who are strangers to her, but also family members, in observational scenes, underscores them with authentic dialogues, and lets them flow into her own world.

The novel allows the reader to travel through the cities and mountains of Albania and Kosovo while gaining insight into the author’s thoughts and feelings. Thus, there are flashbacks of her past, memories of the war, and childhood fears rearranged in the now to bring them into harmony with the environment and one’s identity. “I did not allow myself to feel for a very long time that I too carried the pain of the war in Kosova. Other children had it worse.” Coming to terms with one’s own grief, which gradually turns into acceptance, even inner strength, is one of the themes that frame the plot. Forms of friendship and community also flow into the search for identity. The question of origin can also be raised and immediately answered in this autodidactic narrative:

“But who was I? Where did I come from?” the uprooting, the longing, and the missing. “To learn, laugh, and be at home not only in spirit but also in body, I decided to go to Albania. And although when I finally stood by the sea, gazed into the horizon, and instead of the salt I smelled with homesickness the sweet, resin-soaked scent of summer coniferous forests of Germany, I felt on the earth that belonged to the Albanians a solidity I had never known.” 

The author finds home at the end of her journey, and perhaps one or the other reader will find it together with her; in the south, where perhaps real life is.