In recent centuries, the small Baltic states have only enjoyed brief periods of independence: for about two decades between the two world wars and since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Until recently, aside from a few anthologies, very little fiction from the region had been translated into English, from either the Soviet period or afterward.
ESTONIA
Estonia is the smallest of the Baltic nations, but its fiction is the best represented in English, and
Jaan Kross (1920–2007) is the region’s best-known author. His collection
The Conspiracy and Other Stories (1988, English 1995) deals with hardships during World War II caused by both the Germans and the Soviets.
Treading Air (1998, English 2003) is Kross’s one translated novel covering modern Estonian history. It is the story of an Estonian more or less of Kross’s generation, first describing his comfortable and promising youth and then how his future is crushed by the forces of history, the protagonist remaining in Estonia as the Soviet grip on the nation takes hold and having to work in more or less menial jobs. Kross offers a good though occasionally plodding portrait of the nation and what it has endured, but it is his more creative historical novels written during Soviet times that so far have secured his reputation abroad. Both
The Czar’s Madman (1978, English 1992) and
Professor Martens’ Departure (1984, English 1994) are reflections on freedom, conviction, and action. Though set in czarist times, they also are commentaries on Soviet rule in Estonia.
Mati Unt’s (1944–2005) Things in the Night (1990, English 2005) is a literally electrically charged novel. His Diary of a Blood Donor (1990, English 2008) uses Dracula as a foundation, with characters whose names echo those in Bram Stoker’s vampire classic. Both are allegories of the late Communist age, with Estonian nationalism rumbling under the Soviet yoke. Plot is secondary and constantly shifts the ground under the reader, mixing personal, political, and mythical. Unt’s more approachable documentary novel, Brecht at Night (1997, English 2009), describing Bertolt Brecht’s time in Finland in 1940, is a character study of the complicated, sly, and pampered author into which Unt also weaves the story of Estonia during this period of Soviet expansion into the Baltic states.
Tõnu Õnnepalu’s (b. 1962) short
Border State (1993, English 2000), a confession of sorts, is yet another novel of a foray into the wide open West from the previously isolated East as the overwhelmed narrator describes going to Amsterdam and Paris and the crime he committed there. The more substantial
Radio (2002, English 2014) is a closer exploration of Estonia, its narrator returning to his homeland after a decade in Paris but still finding himself on a journey of self-discovery. A significant aspect of both novels is the narrator’s homosexuality and his efforts to come to terms with it.
KEEP IN MIND
• Jaan Kaplinski’s (b. 1941) autobiographical The Same River (2007, English 2009), set in the 1960s, is the first work of fiction by this major poet available in English.
• Enn Vetemaa (b. 1936) made only a barely noticed appearance in English, but his Three Small Novels (English 1977), published by Moscow’s Progress Publishers, rates a second look.
• Andrus Kivirähk’s (b. 1970) The Man Who Spoke Snakish (2007, English 2015) is a fantasy novel that is an allegory of ancient traditions and changing times.
LATVIA
Very little Latvian literature has been made available in English, even after the country regained its independence. Despite spending decades in exile in the United States, the works of the prolific Anšlavs Eglītis (1906–1993) are essentially unknown there, and almost none have been translated. Alberts Bels (b. 1938) has fared somewhat better, at least in regard to his earlier works. The 1980 volume that includes both The Voice of the Herald (1973) and The Investigator (1967) is a Soviet-era Progress Publishers production, but at least The Cage (1972, English 1990) was published in Great Britain. Both The Investigator and The Cage use some of the devices of the traditional mystery novel, but Bels clearly is addressing Soviet conditions, especially in the very obvious allegory of The Cage, in which the protagonist finds himself literally caged.
The first novel from independent Latvia to appear in English is by the talented Inga Ābele (b. 1972). Her decade-spanning High Tide (2008, English 2013) is a formally creative narrative that essentially unfolds backward.
LITHUANIA
The one Lithuanian work of fiction to find a wider international readership is
Icchokas Meras’s (1934–2014)
Stalemate (1963, English 1980), a novel about the Vilnius ghetto during the Nazi occupation. It both evocatively portrays ghetto life and creates considerable tension with the obscenely high-stakes chess game that runs through it between the Nazi commandant Schoger, who oversees the ghetto with an iron hand, and a teenage prodigy. Despite this novel’s international success, none of Meras’s other works has been translated.
Ričardas Gavelis’s (1950–2002) Vilnius Poker (1989, English 2009) is one of the last big books describing the absurdities of the Soviet system. It is a groundbreaking work of Lithuanian literature, the great city-novel of Vilnius in the Soviet era. It is a harsh, almost reckless portrait of an overwhelmed and paranoid people and city, with an ugly omnipresent outside force determined to abase it further—symbolic of forces like the KGB but also simply the population’s broken spirit and what the citizens have become. This fragmented novel has several perspectives, each narrator barely able to see anything beyond the present, all of their hopes more or less abandoned.
WAIT FOR IT
• Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961–2007) was the leading younger author in Lithuania, whose novels are creative takes on local conditions as well as numerous Tibet-inspired works. None of her fiction is available yet in English.