Valdas Papievis has been living in Paris for over twenty years, and his prose can be recognized from a number of factors: ties with French culture, a minimalist plot, and a melodious and poetic narrative. Papievis’s reader must be patient and prepared for slow reading, when the dramatic highlight depends not so much on the
From Flâneur to Visiteur: The Sign of a Change in the Epoch Read More »
I spot Paula from a distance. Noticing me, she stops at the door. Paula is Portuguese; she is the building’s concierge. We get along well: when I go away, I always leave her the spare keys. You never know what might happen. But that she would wait like that … The wheels in my ears
Lietaus dievas (The God of Rain), Alvydas Šlepikas’s short story collection, belonged to the same tradition of psychological prose of magic realism as the work of Juozas Aputis and Romualdas Granauskas, which recorded the dreary province of Soviet Lithuania and its neurotic personages. This thin book appeared at a time when the pundits of postmodernism declared
The God of Rain and Other Demons Read More »
The Bottle Danius badly needed a drink. He stood in front of the shelf of bottles and couldn’t decide, because he wanted to find a drink that wouldn’t make him feel sick. He examined all the bottles in the shop, and all of them made him feel nauseous. Then he said quietly: Lord, make it
Regressive Hypnosis That girl – her classmates can’t say her name – whatever it may be – names are not what matter to me – I can tell that she sees how we tear ourselves in two, at times, from shame, then crumble – or she stops at unfinished phrases – fearing false finish, unsure
Ilzė Butkutė broke onto the Lithuanian literary scene in 2011 with Caravan Lullabies, winning the Zigmas Gėlė prize for best debut and making it into the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore’s list of 12 most creative books of the year. Her poems exemplified a sonorous lyricism, lush with metaphor, that fit easily into the
Tender Defiance: The Poetry of Ilzė Butkutė Read More »
The actress, poet, and playwright Daiva Čepauskaitė stepped into the field of Lithuanian literature at a time of change, when the Soviet Union was collapsing and independent Lithuania was emerging. She graduated with a diploma in medicine but has never been a practicing doctor. As an actress, Čepauskaitė debuted on the stage in 1990. Her
Dramaturgy that Teaches Knowing, Reminding, and Not Forgetting Read More »
Eugenijus Ališanka (b. 1960)—a poet, translator, and essayist—stands out in the field of Lithuanian literature primarily because he is not a philologist. He graduated in math from Vilnius University. This aspect is frequently linked to Ališanka’s “intellectualism” or “constructivism” as his texts abound in philosophy, metaphysics, and echoes of literary theories. On the other hand,
“Empedocle’s Shoe” — Literary Games and Monotony Read More »
About Travelling Writers Traditionally, any serious discussion of global themes must begin with Adam and Eve. I will begin my own from a somewhat later time, from the story of Cain and Abel, and hope that my own authority doesn’t suffer as a result. “Cain was, of course, cursed, and his punishment, like his
Eugenijus Ališanka Read More »
In Lithuania, Kęstutis Navakas is something close to a cultural institution: a laureate of numerous prizes, the National Culture and Arts Prize among them, a member of various juries, a literary critic, and a translator. He writes almost everything one can imagine: essays, poetry, humorous texts, and something resembling satirical poetic dramas. Now the time
