The Similars: A Novel

By: Thani Naqo

The events of this fiction-like novel take place in the southern United States. An Albanian young man, nicknamed Chaplin, has entered the United States illegally to fulfill his dream of becoming a Hollywood actor. However, he must survive hard work as a gardener and, in order to be legalized, he must find a wife with American citizenship.

By chance he met Susie, a stripper.

She abandoned him and he did not know whether she was dead or alive, when after five years he received the ominous message, "Honey, meet me before I kill myself..."

The message is not only the connecting point, but is also a retrospective organizing element of all the parallel events in this novel.

The generation-to-generation inheritance of aspects of life creates what we often call a country's traditions. However, as immigrants engage with the American Free Lifestyle, it takes a lot of time with young people, but it happens that a lifetime is not enough.

Because of the "pink undertones," the reader will initially assume that this is a novel about love, but in the first few pages it will reveal the counterpoint between American life and the traditions of nationalities. Eroticism is used by the author, as a Chinese Shan, to blast American-style sexual freedom, while revealing aspects of economic and philosophical relationships.

In this novel, events are narrated with cinematic techniques, while the literary style turns them into an artistic example, says Kosta Nake: Albanian literary analyst, writer and publicist.

About the Author

Thani Naqo was born in 1953. He is an Albanian writer and poet. He graduated as a Senior Economist and specialized as a screenwriter from Tirana Institute of Arts.

Thani Naqo, with his family, has been living in the United States since 1997.