The Thin Line

Book excerpt: One morning in the 1990s in Kosovo, the Albanian population of Gjakova find their front doors marked with a white cross. Fearful for their lives, the Albanians in one neighbourhood hide their women and children inside a basement, but they are found by Serbian forces and shot down in cold blood. Ten-year-old Ermal survives, but his mother and sisters are dead. Eight years later, as a young man living with his father in Canada, Ermal is still haunted by those events.