Reviews

Jurgita Jasponytė is a distinguished poet in Lithuanian literature, known for her impactful work and measured cadence of her publications. Her debut poetry collection Šaltupė (the name of a Zarasai street, meaning “cold river”), was released in 2014, followed by her second book, Vartai Auštrieji (The Sharp Gates of Dawn), which was published in 2019. This year, she published

Even though the cliché metaphor teaches us to never judge a book by its cover, the minimalistic pastel-blue soft cover of Tadas Zaronskis’s collection of poems leaves little to be judged even if we wanted to. While A Coloring Book for Friends is considered his debut, it has been a long time coming. With his first poems

Mantas Adomėnas’s spy novels – both the first and the second part of The Coin and the Labyrinth – have been at the top of the Lithuanian bookstore charts for half a year now, alongside the books of influencers and health gurus, the newly revived Dune by Frank Herbert, and the somewhat stale pearls of wisdom by Paulo Coelho.

Alvydas Šlepikas holds a reputation in the Lithuanian literary scene as a versatile author, a writer proficient in all genres of literature. After reading his short fiction, his novel, and poetry collection, I am personally convinced of this. What is the secret to Šlepikas’s success? He takes his time in publishing books and maintains a

Diana Paklonskaitė takes her time to write: her debut poetry collection Gilaus mėlynumo (Deep Blue) appeared in 2006, the second book was published in 2014, and now, after another nine years, her latest collection Gėlės kaip šunys (Flowers Like Dogs), which is reviewed here, has reached readers. I tend to agree with the writer Donald Kajokas, who edited this

Simonas Bernotas is a poet and translator who debuted in 2019 with a colorful, slim, and well-received poetry collection Reivas (Rave). The back cover of the new collection, Pasakų parkas (The Fairytale Park) contains an excerpt from a poem with a paraphrase of one of the most famous lines in Lithuanian poetry. Except that unlike the twentieth-century modernist Henrikas Radauskas,

Justina Žvirblytė’s book Mikrosfera (Microsphere) is her debut collection of poems. The author is a doctoral student at the Institute of Biotechnology of Vilnius University. This fact would probably not be so important if it did not determine the foundations of Žvirblytė’s creative thinking. Different young writers have won The First Book competition, which is organized annually

I was looking forward to the third book by Virginija Kulvinskaitė: I was particularly curious about the turn the author would take after her auto-fictional novel kai aš buvau malalietka (when i was a malalietka). This time it’s Keturi (Four), short stories told in the name of the Other, from the point of view of the Other. A small book

Spring carries life in terms of new poetry anthologies, live readings, and meetings with poets. But not poetry collections. As per usual, after the end of winter, annually marked by the Vilnius Book Fair, the poets this year were silent. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Two notable books were published during this period by two Poetry

Jurga Tumasonytė is one of the most active Lithuanian writers of the younger generation. Her works are distinct because they illustrate a deformed picture of reality and combine the mundane and the mystical, which she conveys in a cinematic style, with a palpable comic touch. Tumasonytė’s prose atypically reflects on such existential phenomena as death,