Estonian Literature Series – serie

The bunker-like café in Tallinn known as “The Cave” is the epicenter of bohemian culture in Soviet-era Estonia. The café’s regulars, the “Cavemen,” escape the dreary reality above ground with vodka and high-minded discussion in their private hideaway. Told from the perspective of a gossip columnist, the novel traces the lives of several of these misfits as they attempt to pursue careers as artists, writers, and politicians in pre- and post-perestroika Estonia. The country’s march towards independence and democracy sets off a series of individual dramas that offer the reader a refreshing alternative to the grand narratives of world history. Written with great verve and humor, Mihkel Mutt’s novel provides an illuminating look at life on the fringes of occupied Estonian society.

For five years, Enn Padrik has postponed the investigation into theapparently religiously inspired suicides of his daughter and herfriends at a commune near Viljandi, but now he can postpone it nolonger. He must travel all over Estonia and even as far as Franceinterviewing anyone who might remember anything relevant.Some of these people seem to have been waiting for him, othersrefuse to talk. And little by little, a bigger and quite unexpectedpicture starts to emerge. From the late 1970s through 2011, TheReconstruction spans the lives of two generations, going from thelate 1970s through 2011, narrating the changes in the wider worldand Estonian society in particular, the transition from a world ofright and wrong to a world where most things are neither, but theyearning for absolute truths still won’t go away.

In this collection which contains both autobiography and fiction, the prominent Estonian artist and writer Toomas Vint, whose career spans the Soviet period and Estonia’s re-gaining of independence, demonstrates his characteristic mischievous, dark sense of humour, an artist’s eye for visual detail, and an experimental approach to form. His main themes are the fine dividing line between fantasy and reality, man’s foibles, frailties and capacity for self-deception, and the absurd and sometimes tragicomic nature of the human condition.