Mudlum’s Diary of a Rose Lunatic
Each page might appear to recount nothing more than the daily chores, yet beneath the surface lies a contemplation of life and death, of the human life cycle, of the overwhelming power of nature and how helplsessly small we are in the face of it, of fate and our attempts to come to terms with…
Andrei Ivanov’s The Days
I’ve mentioned this in a previous review of Ivanov’s work, but it bears repeating: his greatest contribution to Estonian literature is his sobering, sideways glance at local life. He holds a mirror up to Estonians, revealing the shadow side of their psyche.
Armin Kõomägi’s Heaven
The story is simple and universally understandable: the inhabitants of Earth have turned life on the planet into hell, leaving no place for humanity. Where there is no war, there are nuclear tests, burning forests, or airports occupied by animals displaced from their habitats.
Meelis Friedenthal’s Around a Point
Verdi hopes to reach Estonia, a place with familial roots, but even this small country is a periphery, an intermediate area, the ancient historical-mythological Hyperborea, a border country. And borders are largely arbitrary, drawn throughout history by maniacs with too much power. So where exactly is home? Perhaps not a place at all, but an…
In a Dream I Saw the World. Doris Kareva’s Poetry in Italian
As though composed in another time and another dimension, Doris Kareva’s verses, in their dense brevity, offer an intense aesthetic experience, triggering in the reader a powerful and rarefied emotion – like the light of the North.
Lilli Luuk’s Night Mother
Luuk does not shy away from dealing with complex themes in her works – death, war, occupation and the transmission of generational traumas are just some of the motifs that the writer, with the help of sensitive and aesthetic language, weaves into her narratives.
