Reviews

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

In the history of world literature and culture, there were two thinkers who, with great ingenuity, disclosed the natural inconsistency of being human and the experiences of the individual tortured by desires.  They were William Shakespeare and Sigmund Freud. The former created characters with impossible-to-resolve dilemmas for his sonnets and dramas. After Shakespeare, humanity irrevocably

To many, the texts of Benediktas Januševičius appear lightweight, draw laughter or raise a smile. No wonder the impression or sound catches up with you first, for his texts seemingly invite you for a chat and trigger a multi-sided understanding: since words envelop the image and the sound and are mostly performed, this poetry seeks

Apie vandenis, medžius ir vėjus (On Waters, Trees, and Winds), the new poetry collection by the poet, essay and prose writer Donaldas Kajokas (b. 1953), has been almost universally recognized as one of the best recent poetry books. A holder of all possible literary prizes in Lithuania, as well as the Prize of the Baltic

The drop of blood on the book cover is so realistic that it makes you want to wipe it off with your wet finger. It has fallen so dramatically among the pinholes drawn there that you want either to shake with uneasiness or smile with cynicism. This drop is so elemental—life and death in one—that

Alfonsas Andriuškevičius is a versatile personality, an intellectual of the highest caliber, and a cultural figure, and how he is referred to depends on who is writing, thinking, or speaking about him. To an artist or an art historian, Andriušis, as he is called, is primarily the art critic who has shaped an entire school

Danutė Kalinauskaitė is one of the most interesting contemporary Lithuanian prose writers. The author of three books, she combines the features of essay writing and the Lithuanian school of the short story and is recognized by her original style.  Although her latest book Skersvėjų namai (The Home of Droughts, 2015) consists of nine different short stories, the

At the Vilnius Book Fair launch event of Sigitas Parulskis’s latest book, Nutylėtų lelijų miestas (The Town of Unspoken Lilies), the literary scholar Jūratė Čerškutė said, “Sigitas Parulskis no longer needs to be introduced.” “But why?” the ironic author was quick to interrupt. “No one ever introduces me anymore. I would quite enjoy hearing a list of

Aušra Kaziliūnaitė (b. 1987) is a poet and a doctoral student at Vilnius University’s Faculty of Philosophy. She is one of the most prominent anti-traditionalist poets of her generation and deconstructs or ignores the forms and imagery of canonical lyrical poetry. To describe her creative work, she resorts to the notions of the avant-garde, post-avant-garde,