Jan - March 2023: The Baltic Sea region

Following other Reading Globally theme reads around bodies of water (The Mediterranean, The Caribbean, and, most recently, The Indian Ocean), The Baltic Sea is the theme read for the first quarter of 2023. Feel free to focus your reading on the sea itself, Vikings, books about life near the sea, travelogues, or authors from any of the neighboring countries (Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden). I have tried to put together suggestions of representative works from each country, with a narrower focus in regards to Poland, Russia, and Germany, since they have such large literary traditions. Please make suggestions of your own to flesh out what I have listed. In some cases, I have included links to online resources. I hope this is helpful, and I look forward to seeing where our reading takes us this quarter!

map courtesy of Nations Online Project

The Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a nook in the Atlantic Ocean nestled between Scandinavia and Europe. Its history is replete with shipwrecks, Vikings, battles at sea, and ice. The following is some background information gleaned largely from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea):

GEOLOGY
The Baltic Sea is the world's largest brackish inland sea. It is about 1,600 km (990 mi) long, 193 km (120 mi) wide, and 55 meters (180 ft) deep. It has approximately 8,000 km (5,000 mi) of coastline. It is bordered by Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. The two largest rivers flowing into the Black Sea are the Neva and the Vistula.

About 45% of the Baltic Sea is ice-covered in the winter, peaking in February or March. Since 1720, the Baltic Sea has frozen over entirely 20 times, most recently in early 1987, which was the most severe winter in Scandinavia since 1720. Fast ice forms along the coastline first, rendering ports unusable without the use of icebreakers.
Winter storms begin in October and have caused numerous shipwrecks. Storms contributed to the extreme difficulties of rescuing passengers of the ferry M/S Estonia en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden, in September 1994, which claimed the lives of 852 people. Older, wood-based shipwrecks such as the Vasa tend to remain well-preserved, as the shipworm cannot survive in the Baltic's cold and brackish water.

ECONOMY
The Baltic Sea is a source of fish and amber. It is the main trade route for the export of Russian petroleum. Other trade goods over the centuries include exported lumber, wood tar, flax, hemp and furs. From medieval times Sweden exported iron and silver, and Poland still exports salt by sea. Shipbuilding is a major industry in the ports, and the economic importance of tourism is driving environmental concerns. The Øresund Bridge-Tunnel (completed in 1999), links Sweden and the Danish mainland.

HISTORY
In the early Middle Ages, during the Viking Age, Norse (Scandinavian) merchants built a trade empire around the Baltic. They fought for control of the Baltic Sea against Wendish tribes dwelling on the southern shore. The Norse also used the rivers of Russia for trade routes, finding their way eventually to the Black Sea and southern Russia.

The lands on the Baltic's eastern shore were among the last in Europe to be converted to Christianity. This finally happened during the Northern Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Between the 8th and 14th centuries, piracy was prevalent in the Baltic.

Starting in the 11th century, the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic were settled by migrants mainly from Germany, a movement called the Ostsiedlung ("east settling").

In the 13th to 16th centuries, the strongest economic force in Northern Europe was the Hanseatic League, a federation of merchant cities around the Baltic and North Seas.

In the 16th and early 17th centuries, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden fought wars for Dominium maris baltici ("Lordship over the Baltic Sea"). Eventually, Sweden won out, although the Dutch conducted a lot of the trade in the later part of the century. In the 18th century, Sweden was defeated in the Great Northern War, and Russia and Prussia became the leading powers over the sea. Peter the Great founded his new Russian capital, Saint Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva river at the east end of the Baltic Sea.

After the unification of Germany in 1871, the whole southern coast became German. But after Germany's defeat in WWI, Poland was granted access to the Baltic Sea via the Polish Corridor and enlarged the port of Gdynia in rivalry with the port of the Free City of Danzig. After the Nazis' rise to power, Germany reclaimed the area and occupied the Baltic states.

In 1945 the Baltic Sea became a mass grave for retreating soldiers and refugees on torpedoed troop transports. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff remains the worst maritime disaster in history, killing roughly 9,000 people. Germany was disarmed and large quantities of ammunition stockpiles were dumped directly into the Baltic and North Seas. In 2005, a Russian group of scientists found over 5,000 airplane wrecks, sunken warships, and other material, mainly from World War II, on the bottom of the sea. In addition, various nations, including the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States have disposed of chemical weapons in the Baltic Sea, raising concerns of environmental contamination.

After 1945, the German population was expelled from all areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, making room for new Polish and Russian settlement. Poland gained most of the southern shore. The Soviet Union gained another access to the Baltic with the Kaliningrad Oblast, that had been part of German-settled East Prussia. The Baltic states on the eastern shore were annexed by the Soviet Union. Since May 2004, the Baltic Sea has been almost entirely surrounded by countries of the European Union, with the exception of Russia.

LITERATURE OF THE BALTIC SEA

The Baltic Story: A Thousand-Year History of Its Lands, Sea and Peoples by Caroline Boggis-Rolfe (2020)
The Baltic: A History by Michael North and Kenneth Kronenberg (2016)

One excellent source of information is the virtual Baltic Sea Library. It's aim is "to foster the perception of a common cultural identity within the Baltic Sea region as a whole." It contains lists of works in various languages, including English, and information on authors, etc. For easy of access, here is the list of works in English, excluding poems. On the website, each title is linked to helpful background information, and many of the poems are quoted in full.

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Germania by Cornelius Tacitus
Kalevala. Land of the Heroes by Elias Lönnrot
King Olaf Trygvason's Saga by Snorri Sturluson
Nils Holgersson's Wonderful Journey by Selma Lagerlöf
Novel 11, Book 18 by Dag Solstad
Old Mother Kunks by Aino Pervik
One who came back: the diary of a Jewish survivor by Josef Katz
Seacrow Island by Astrid Lindgren
The Ambassador by Bragi Ólafsson
The Beauty of History by Viivi Luik
The Danish History by Saxo Grammaticus
The Fisherman and his Wife by Brüder Grimm
The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen
The People of Hemsö by August Strindberg
The Rector of Reigi by Aino Kallas
The saga of Egil Skallagrimsson by Snorri Sturluson
The Voyage of Ohthere by King Ælfred
The Voyage of Wulfstan by King Ælfred

Other works mentioned are the biographies of people like Tomas Tranströmer, who wrote the poem “Östersjöar”. There he portrays his grandfather who worked as a pilot for ships in the Stockholm archipelago, and Norwegian writer Tor Eystein Øverås travelled around the Baltic Sea for eight months and wrote a book about it. There he poses the hypothesis that Thomas Mann was greatly impressed by another family story, namely Alexander Lange Kielland’s novel Garman & Worse (1880).

The Baltic Sea Library also has essays such as Travels Around the Baltic by Tor Eystein Øverås.

DENMARK

For an overview, see Danish Literature and the Baltic.

LITERATURE

Harald Bluetooth (d. 985): The Vikings were the first Danish authors and wrote their poems on runestones. The most famous is The Jelling Stone, erected by Harald in honor of his parents. In his verse, Harald celebrates his conquest of Denmark and Norway and his conversion to Christianity.

Saxo Grammaticus (c1150-1220): With the introduction of Christianity to Denmark, Latin became the predominant written language. Saxo wrote the first full history of Denmark, Gesta Danorum (The Deeds of the Danes). It contains the tale of Prince Amletus, better known as Hamlet.

Leonora Christina, Countess Ulfeldt (1621-1698): Her posthumously published autobiography, Jammers Minde (Remembered Woes), written secretly during two decades of solitary confinement in a royal dungeon, gives an insider look into the absolute monarchy of the 1660s.

Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754): Influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and Humanism, he is considered the founder of modern Danish and Norwegian literature (the two countries were under a dual monarchy at the time). A playwright known as the "Moliére of the North”, his works are still performed today. One of his most famous is Jeppe on the Hill.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875): A prolific author of poems, novels, and travelogues, he is best known for his fairy tales (all 156 of them) including The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855): A philosopher and theologian known as the father of existentialism, Kierkegaard's works include Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and The Concept of Anxiety.

Georg Brandes (1842-1927): A critic and literary scholar, Brandes was behind the "Modern Breakthrough" movement, which was based on realism and naturalism, replacing romanticism. His lectures Main currents in nineteenth century literature outline these ideas. He is also known for his biographies of figures such as Kierkegaard, Goethe, Shakespeare, etc.

Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885): Jacobsen was a novelist, poet, and scientist, and began the naturalist movement in Denmark. He was the first to translate Charles Darwin’s work into Danish. His autobiographical novel, Niels Lyhne, was called "the bible of atheists" by contemporaries.

Henrik Pontoppidan (1857–1943) Part of the Modern Breakthrough movement, Pontoppidan won the Nobel Prize in 1917 (with Karl Gjellerup) for his "authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark." His main works are The Promised Land, Lucky Per, and The Realm of the Dead.

Martin Andersen Nexø (1869-1954): An ardent communist, Nexø was the first major author to focus on the Danish working class. One of his most famous works is Pelle the Conqueror.

Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950): Jensen introduced the prose poem to Danish literature. He is also well-known for his masterpiece The Fall of the King and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1944.

Karen Blixen (1885–1962): Blixen, who also used the pen name "Isak Dinesen," is notable for her memoir, Out of Africa (1937).

Tove Ditlevsen (1917-1976): Ditlevsen grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen and struggled with substance abuse and several failed marriages. Her memoirs, The Copenhagen Trilogy, were reissued and named as one of the ten best books of 2021 by the New York Times Book Review.

Villy Sørensen (1929-2001): Sørensen was a philosopher, critic, translator, and short-story writer, whose stories were often compared to Franz Kafka's. His novel Downfall of the Gods is a retelling of the classic Edda.

Klaus Rifbjerg (1931-2015): Rifbjerg wrote more than 170 books, stories, and essays. His 1958 novel Terminal Innocence is a coming of age story considered his masterpiece.

Inger Christensen (1935-2009): She wrote experimental poetry based on systemic structures. Her poetry collection Alphabet was inspired by both the alphabet and the Fibonacci mathematical sequence.

Jussi Adler-Olsen (b. 1950): He is a Nordic Noir crime fiction writer, most known for his Department Q series starting with The Keeper of Lost Causes.

Peter Hoeg (1957- ): Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow is a thriller set in Greenland.

Jens Christian Grøndahl (1959- ): Grøndahl writes about relationships, often with a psychological twist, such as Silence in October and An Altered Light.

Jakob Ejersbo (1968–2008): Ejersbo was a journalist and author of the immensely popular novel Nordkraft, about three young adults with drug problems. He also wrote the Africa Trilogy, inspired by his own childhood experiences in Tanzania. He died of esophageal cancer at age 40.

A.J. Kazinski is the pseudonym of the thriller writing duo Anders Rønnow Klarlund (1971-) and Jacob Weinreich (1972-). The Last Good Man is based on the Jewish legend of the 36 Just Men.

For more titles see:

Student Experts: 13 Danish Books You Need to Read
List of Danish authors
List of Danish woman authors

ESTONIA

Because Estonia was controlled by Germany, Sweden, and Russia for much of its history, little was written in Estonian before the mid-1800s. Folklore influenced early works, such as the Kalevipoeg. Since there hasn't been a lot of Estonian literature translated into English, I have included links to some short works available online. A good background history is Estonia and the Estonians by Toivo U. Raun.

LITERATURE

Kalevipoeg (Son of Kalev), the national epic published (1857–61) by Friedrich Robert Faehlmann and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald

A. H. Tammsaare (1878–1940): Truth and Justice is a five-volume social epic depicting Estonia's evolution from Czarist state to independent nation. It's semi-autobiographical and an Estonian classic.

Jaan Kross (1920–2007): Estonia's most translated and thus well-known authors. Nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. He wrote mostly historical novels and short stories. See The Czar's Madman or Professor Martens' Departure.

Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021): A poet inspired by Oriental religion and nature. Also published a semi-autobiographical novel, The Same River, which has also been translated into English.

Mati Unt (1944-2005): Novelist and theatre director. Several of his novels have been published by Dalkey Archives.

Toomas Vint (1944- ): Painter and writer. An Unending Landscape and The Sweepstakes of Love are available in English.

Mihkel Mutt (1953- ): Mice in the Wind

Tõnu Õnnepalu Emil Tode (pen name Emil Tode, 1962- ): A poet, novelist, and translator, who gained widespread recognition for his novel, Border State.

Eeva Parkis: “A Dog’s Life”

Triin Soomets (1969- ): poetry

Jan Kaus (1971- ): prose poems

Andrei Ivanov (1971- ): “Jackdaw on a Snowdrift”

Maarja Kangro (1973- ): An extract from “At the Manor”

Mehis Heinsaar (1973- ): “Death among the Icebergs”

Kristiina Ehin (1977- ): Singer-songwriter and poet. Several books of her poetry have been published.

Kaur Riismaa (1986- ): "Evening Fare"

FINLAND

Literature in Finnish began in the 16th century with religious texts. After becoming part of the Russian Empire in the 18th century, literacy increased, although Swedish was more commonly written. Folk poetry was collected and promoted in an effort to champion Finnish identity, the most famous being the Kalevala. The first novel to be written in Finnish was Seven Brothers in 1870.

LITERATURE

The Kalevala (compiled by Elias Lonnrot in the 19th century) is Finland's national epic poem. It kick-started the use of the Finnish language in literature and was to become a potent symbol of Finnish nationhood.

Aleksis Kivi (1834-1872): His classic novel, Seven Brothers, was written in Finnish, during a time when the educated classes spoke Swedish. His birthday is celebrated as Finnish Literature Day.

Frans Eemil Sillanpaa (1888-1964): Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1939, he donate his medal to be melted down to aid the war effort. He's known for his portrayals of poor peasants and their affinity for nature. The Maid Silja was published in 1931.

Tove Jansson (1914-2001): A Swedish-speaking Finn, Jansson is the author and illustrator of the Moomin books for children, as well as six novels and five books of short stories for adults. The Summer Book is a wonderful book about a girl and her grandmother on an island in the Gulf of Finland.

Väinö Linna (1920-1992): His famous third novel, The Unknown Soldier, is about the Continuation War between Finland and Russia and depicts the lives of ordinary soldiers, and Under the North Star is a trilogy that follows a Finnish family from 1880-1950.

Arto Paasilinna (1942-2018): Born in Lapland, Paasilinna is best known for the comic novel The Year of the Hare. Also see The Howling Miller.

Hannu Mäkelä (1943- ): The author of more than 100 books, he is known for his children's books, especially the series about Mr. Boo.

Leena Krohn (1947- ): A science fiction writer, among other things, her Collected Works explore contemporary social and scientific issues.

Rosa Liksom (1958- ): Her Compartment No. 6 is about a Finnish student in Moscow (like the author) who is heading to Ulaan Baator on a train and listening to the life story of a Russian man in the compartment.

Leena Lehtolainen (1964- ): A Nordic mystery writer, My First Murder is the first in a series featuring the female detective, Maria Kallio. She published her first novel at age 12.

Sofi Oksanen (1977- ): A dramatist, novelist, and librettist. She turned her first play, Purge, into a novel which topped the Finnish bestseller lists. It deals with difficult topics such as rape, collusion, sexual slavery, and resistance during the Soviet occupation of Estonia. When the Doves Disappeared is another popular historical novel.

Riikka Pulkkinen (1980- ): True is the story of a dying woman and her daughter and a secret that is revealed layer by layer.

GERMANY

For an understanding of the Baltic Sea in the German national consciousness, see the essay The Lost Baltic Sea of German Literature.

See "Born in Gdansk (formerly Danzig)" under Poland. Most of these authors wrote in German.

Other German writers with a connection to the Baltic:

Theodor Fontane (1819-1898): Considered one of the most important 19th century German novelists and poets, Fontane is known for his strongly portrayed female characters. His novel Effi Briest is akin to Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina and is set on the Baltic coast.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955): A member of a prominent intellectual family, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. His novel Buddenbrooks chronicles a north German merchant family (much like his own) over four generations.

Hans Fallada (1893-1947): The pseudonym for Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen, Fallada was born in Pomerania. His works are written in a straightforward, factual style known as New Objectivity. He is most know for Every Man Dies Alone (which I loved) and Little Man, Now What?.

LATVIA

Latvian literature didn't really begin until the mid-nineteenth century with the book Songs by Juris Alunans. He wanted to show that Latvian could be a literary language, not just a spoken one. The large national uprising in 1905 led to severe repression by Russia and led to an emigration of Latvian intellectuals, the first of several. Many Latvian writers fled the German occupation in 1941 and after WWII were either in the Soviet gulags or fled to the West. The most recent era in Latvian literature began in 1991 with the end of Soviet rule and is the source of most of the English translations.

LITERATURE

Andrejs Pumpurs (1841-1902): Famous for writing the Latvian national epic, The Bear Slayer.

Zigmunds Skujiņš (1926-2022): He joined the Pioneers when the Soviets invaded, then was drafted by the Germans when they occupied Latvia. Was in a POW camp before being allowed back to now-Soviet-again Latvia. Several of his novels have been translated, including Flesh-Coloured Dominoes and A Man in His Prime.

Alberts Bels (1938- ): Known for psychological novels like The Cage and Insomnia

Māra Zālīte (b. 1952): Her parents had been exiled to Krasnoyarsk, Siberia in 1941. She was born there, but moved back to Latvia in 1956. Know for her autobiographical novel, Five Fingers.

Nora Ikstena (1969- ): Writer and founder of the Latvian Literature Centre. Her novel, Soviet Milk, is about the effects of Soviet rule on a young female doctor.

Inga Abele (1972- ): Her novels, High Tide and The Year the River Froze Twice, and a collection of poems called "The Horses of Atgazene Station" have been published in English.

Kristīne Ulberga (1979- ): The Green Crow, her first adult novel, won several prizes.

Jānis Joņevs (1980- ): His debut novel, Doom 94, won the EU Prize for Literature

Jana Egle: “The Quarry”

Sven Kuzmins: "Three Weddings and a Funeral"

Alise Redviņa: “Lynn”

Arvis Viguls: two poems “Forgetting” and “Home”

LITHUANIA

Lithuanian has a rich literary tradition stretching back to the 16th century (before that Latin was most commonly used). Russia imposed a ban on writing in the "Polonized-Latin script" from 1865 to 1904, although Lithuanian works in Cyrillic were encouraged. This was reversed in 1904.

LITERATURE

Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-1780): A Prussian-Lithuanian poet and pastor, he published the first Lithuanian fiction, The Seasons, which follows a rural community throughout the year.

Vincas Kreve-Mickevicius (1882-1954): A prolific writer in many styles, he also collected folk songs and legends. His short story, The Herdsman and the Linden Tree, is available in English.

Antanas Skema (1910-1961): Banned (like many others) under the Soviets, White Shroud is an existential novel, considered to be the first modern novel in Lithuanian.

Juozas Lukša (1921-1951): Lukša (codename Daumantas) was a leader of the anti-Soviet partisan fighters and wrote the autobiographical work, Forest Brothers or Fighters for Freedom.

Icchokas Meras (1934–2014): A Lithuanian Jew, Meras survived the Holocaust by hiding with a rural family. He was pressured by the Soviets to emigrate to Israel in 1972. Stalemate is a novel about a young Jewish chess prodigy challenged to a game by a Nazi commandant with the lives of children at stake.

Jurgis Kuncinas (1947-2002): Kuncinas is famous for his fictionalized autobiographical stories, of which the most famous is the novel Tula.

Alvydas Šlepikas (1966- ): In the Shadow of Wolves was the most widely read novel in Lithuanian in 2012. It's about Prussian children who would travel to Lithuanian in search of food after WWII. They were known as wolf-children.

Kristina Sabaliauskaite (1974- ): An art historian and contemporary writer, she is most famous for her quartet, Silva Rerum. Only Vilnius. Wilno. Vilna. Three Short Stories, however, has been translated into English.

Birute Putrius has a couple of books in English, including Lost Birds and The Last Book Smugglers.

In diaspora:
Ruta Sepetys: A Lithuanian-American, author of Between Shades of Gray

Julija Šukys: A Lithuanian-Canadian, author of Siberian exile : blood, war, and a granddaughter's reckoning, an excellent exploration of Lithuanian's role in WWII, and Epistolophilia : writing the life of Ona Šimaitė.

Because the land of Lithuania at times was part of Poland, I want to mention an author who is usually considered Polish but grew up in what is now Lithuania: Czeslaw Milosz. His lyrical autobiographical novel, The Issa Valley, is about his childhood in the countryside and would fit nicely here, as would his memoir, Native Realm.

POLAND

Little in the way of Polish literature exists prior to the arrival of Christianity in 966, and then it was written in Latin. During the Renaissance, however, foreign authors flooded to Poland, which saw a burst of Polish language works. During the Polish Baroque ((between 1620 and 1764), Jesuit high schools became popular with their education based on Latin classics. This led to a rise in poetry, both in Latin and Polish. The period of Polish Enlightenment peaked in the second half of the 18th century, but went into a sharp decline after Partition in 1795 when intellectuals fled west. Polish Romanticism, unlike Romanticism elsewhere in Europe, was largely a movement for independence against the foreign occupation. In the aftermath of the failed January uprising in 1863 (a bid for the return of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), the new period of Polish Positivism began to advocate skepticism and the exercise of reason. The modernist period known as the Young Poland movement in visual arts, literature and music, came into being around 1890, and concluded with the Poland's return to independence (1918). Literature of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) encompasses a short, though exceptionally dynamic period in Polish literary consciousness. In the years of German and Soviet occupation of Poland, all artistic life was dramatically compromised. The situation began to worsen dramatically around 1949–1950 with the introduction of the Stalinist doctrine by minister Sokorski. Modern Polish literature can be divided into the 1956-1990 Post-Stalinist communist era, and 1990-present. (summary excerpted from Wikipedia)

Background suggestion: The Baltic Landscape and Mythology in Polish Literature and The History of Polish Literature by Czesław Miłosz

NOBEL LAUREATES:

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916): Best known for Quo Vadis, which is set in Nero's Rome, and his historical trilogy, the first of which is With Fire and Sword.

Władysław Reymont (1865–1925): His novel, The Promised Land, is a social panorama set in Łódź during the industrial revolution. The Peasants is praised as an authentic account of 19th century Polish country life. It was written in four-parts and is subtitled in English publication after the seasons.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–91): A Yiddish writer, Singer emigrated to the US in 1935, which most likely saved his life. Very prolific, he wrote novels, short stories, children's books, autobiographies, etc. Where to start? The Family Moskat, A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, or In My Father's Court, about his childhood in Warsaw.

Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004): He survived the German occupation of Warsaw only to be forced to emigrate by the communist regime. A prolific poet, novelist, essayist, etc., my favorites are The Issa Valley (a novel rooted in his childhood in what is now Lithuania), The Captive Mind (a collection of essays), and his Collected Poems.

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012): The Nobel committee cited her "poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality." View with a Grain of Sand is one of her many poetry collections.

Olga Tokarczuk (1962- ): Awarded the Nobel in 2018, Tokarczuk is widely translated and discussed. Her novels include Flights, which won the International Booker Prize, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob.

LITERATURE FROM GDANSK

To narrow the field, I tried to find authors from the provinces that border the Baltic Sea. The best I could do is those born in the port city of Gdansk, formerly Danzig. For a broader list, see Polish Literature in English Translation.

Johanna Schopenhauer (1766–1838): Mother of philosopher Arthur Shopenhauer. Wrote travelogues such as A Lady Travels, and a book of short stories, Vestiges, is available on Amazon.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860): A German-educated philosopher known for his metaphysical pessimism. See The World as Will and Representation or Essays and Aphorisms.

Max Halbe (1865–1944): German dramatist and exponent of Naturalism. Youth is available in English.

Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930): A prominent leader for women's rights and one of the first German woman to earn a doctorate, she broke with the left and aligned with the proto-Nazis after WWI. The Modern Woman's Rights Movement: A Historical Survey is available on Amazon.

Günter Grass (1927–2015): The recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature, Grass wrote in German. His Danzig Trilogy, beginning with The Tin Drum, focuses on the rise of Nazism and how WWII effected the city. Peeling the Onion is a memoir about his childhood.

Rutka Laskier (1929-1943): Laskier was murdered at Auschwitz at the age of fourteen. Her diary has been published in English as Rutka's Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust .

Lech Walesa (1943- ): Dissident and leader of the Solidarity movement, Walesa was elected President of Poland in 1990. In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In recent years, his legacy has been brought into question by documents suggesting he was a paid informant. His memoirs include Way of Hope and The Struggle and the Triumph: An Autobiography.

Pawel Huelle (born 1957- ): During communism, Huelle wrote for Solidarity and the samizdat movement. Who was David Weiser? is about an outcast Jewish boy who becomes a local hero. Mercedes-Benz is autobiographical fiction reflecting on three generations during years of upheaval.

Jacek Dehnel (1980- ): Dehnel is a poet and novelist. His Lala is a Polish family saga, and Saturn is a fictionalized memoir of Goya.

BALTIC RUSSIA

Russia borders the Baltic Sea in two places: the Kaliningrad Oblast and the region around St. Petersburg. The Kaliningrad Oblast is an enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. It is home to about a million people and has Russia's only ice-free port in winter, Baltiysk. St. Petersburg is situated on the Neva River and is the largest city on the Baltic Sea. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703 as an alternative capitol to Moscow. It was known as Petrograd after the outbreak of WWI to remove the German words "Sankt" and "burg" from the name. In 1924, five days after Lenin's death, it was renamed Leningrad. In a 1991 referendum the city's name was returned to Saint Petersburg.

For background, see the essay The Baltic Sea as a Theme for Saint Petersburg Writers.

LITERATURE

Kalingrad:

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): A German Enlightenment philosopher who used to live in Kaliningrad and is buried there. Critique of Pure Reason is one of his most well-known works.

St. Petersburg region:

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837): Although born in Moscow, Pushkin spent most of his life in St. Petersburg. He is famous for the novel in verse, Eugene Onegin and the The Bronze Horseman, an elegy to Peter the Great and the city he founded.

Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852): Born in Ukraine, Gogol later lived and wrote in St. Petersburg. His Petersburg Tales include some of his most famous short stories, including "The Overcoat". The Nose is a Kafka-esque novel that was rejected by communist publishers for its satirical depiction of social image and status outweighing individual personality.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881): He spent most of his life in Neva and many of his novels are set there or in St. Petersburg. See White Nights, Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, or The Idiot.

Alexander Blok (1880-1921): A St. Petersburg intellectual and poet. His descriptions of the city in his poems from 1904-1908 (during the revolution) are described as impressionistic and eerie. The Twelve is a long poem about twelve soldiers wandering Petrograd during the Revolution.

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966): Although, like Gogol, poet Akhmatova was born in Ukraine, she lived most of her life in St. Petersburg. She survived the Siege of Leningrad and wrote "To My City" when forced to evacuate to Tashkent.

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938): A critic of the Stalinist regime, Mandelstam had to move a lot, but was a prominent poet in 1900s Leningrad. See his poem, "Leningrad."

Vladimir Nabokov (Author, 1899-1977): Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, but left at age 18, never to return. Speak, Memory is about his privileged childhood. His novels often contain the theme of permanent exile.

Joseph Brodsky (Poet, 1940-1996): Born in Leningrad, Brodsky was forced to emigrate in 1972 and eventually became a US citizen. He won the Nobel Prize in 1987 and was named US Poet Laureate in 1991. To Urania: Selected Poems 1965–1985 deals with themes of memory, home, and loss.

Books set in St. Petersburg:

Andrei Bely's Petersburg is set during the 1905 Revolution and deals with father-son relationship and being forced to choose between East and West, a common theme in St. Petersburg. A classic of 20th century Russian Symbolism.

Dina Rubina's The White Dove of Cordoba is about a con artist who forges artwork. The protagonist is born in Ukraine, moves to Jerusalem, and then is trained in art in Leningrad.

Boris Akunin's The Winter Queen is a police procedural set partially in St. Petersburg.

SWEDEN

Swedish literature begins with the Rök runestone, carved by Vikings circa 800 CE. During the Middle Ages, Latin was the language of the land, until the publication of the Christian Bible into Swedish in 1541. In the 17th century secular Swedish literature began to be written. Swedish was also the language of the Finnish nobility and educated classes, so much Finnish literature was written in Swedish, but I have placed those works, such as those by Tove Jansson, in the Finland section.

General background: A History of Sweden: From Ice Age to our Age by Herman Lindqvist

LITERATURE

August Strindberg (1849-1912): An iconoclast, prolific playwright and author, he wrote what is considered the first modern Swedish novel, The Red Room. It is about a group of Bohemians and is a good example of social realism.

Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940): She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in 1909. A teacher, she was asked to write a geography book for children. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is a dark children's story about a young mischief-maker who travel's throughout Sweden's historical provinces. Content warning: animals may be hurt. Gösta Berling’s Saga is set in Värmland and is about a defrocked priest and his lovers.

Hjalmar Söderberg (1869-1941): Doctor Glas was hugely controversial in it's day being about a doctor who falls for his married patient and contemplates killing her husband. The English translation has an introduction by Margaret Atwood.

Frans Gunnar Bengtsson (1894-1954): If you can only read one book for the Black Sea Challenge, you wouldn't go wrong choosing The Long Ships. A novel of Vikings and sea battles, it is a wonderful adventure novel and not what you are probably anticipating.

Vilhelm Moberg (1898-1973): A prominent intellectual and debater, journalist, author, playwright, and historian. The Emigrants is a four-volume story of a couple forced by poverty to emigrate to America. He was an outspoken critic of the monarchy, Nazism, Stalin, and his books were some of those targets for burning by the Nazis.

Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002): In January 2017, Lindgren was the world's 18th most translated author, and the fourth most translated children's writer after Enid Blyton, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Brothers Grimm. The classic children's story, Pippi Longstocking, is about an exceptionally strong girl who lives alone with her horse and pet monkey.

Henning Mankell (1948-2015): An internationally famous crime writer, especially for his series featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander, he also wrote plays, children's books, and novels. He spent considerable time in Africa, especially Mozambique.

Stieg Larsson (1954-2004): The worldwide phenomena that put Nordic Noir on the map, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in a trilogy about troubled but brilliant Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Content warning: sexual violence. The books were published posthumously when the author died of a sudden heart attack.

Marit Kapla (1970- ): Osebol: "this quiet, meditative ode to a small Värmland village on the brink of depopulation is quite unlike anything else. Composed of the interwoven testimonies of almost all of the 40 remaining inhabitants of Osebol, this sparse, poem-like text details their lives and thoughts without commentary or narrative, as though snatched straight from conversations."

Jonas Hassen Khemiri (1978- ): A finalist for the 2020 National Book Award, The Family Clause is an inter-generational drama told from multiple perspectives.

Fredrik Backman (1981- ): Personal disclaimer: I love Bachman's books, and I'm not alone. After his debut novel, A Man Called Ove, was translated into English, it remained on the NYT bestseller list for 42 weeks, a feat for a translated literary novel. It's being made into a movie starring Tom Hanks. His trilogy about an ice hockey town, Beartown, is of a different ilk than his other books.

Wonderful start. I could spend the whole year reading from this list!

To anyone new to this reading from this part of the world, take the advice in >12 labfs39: and read The Long Ships.

This is so interesting. Great research. I am working on the Scandiavian genealogy on my husband's side of the family and this will help.

Yes, fabulous intro, thank you! Can’t wait to get going.

I think my Baltic favourites — so far — are The long ships (inevitably), The summer book, the Grass Danzig trilogy, and a very recent discovery, Kruso.

I bet nobody reads Critique of pure reason!

I’d forgotten about Johanna Schopenhauer — she appears in Lotte in Weimar, and I always meant to follow her up after that.

Thanks for a great intro Lisa!

I have checked out the ebook of The summer book from the library. There are several on your list that I'm interested in, but this one will get me started.

Thanks! My personal recommendations would be

Estonia: I quite enjoyed the Kalevipoeg when I read it in grad school. I like mythology from time to time. Graves without Crosses is indelibly engraved on my mind, but it is exceedingly grim. Full disclosure: Toivo Raun, author of Estonia and the Estonians was my thesis advisor. :-)

Finland: I loved The Summer Book, thoroughly enjoyed The Year of the Hare, and appreciated the unhappy Purge.

Lithuania: I have only read authors once removed: Sepetys and Šukys, whom I heard speak at the Decatur Book Festival.

Poland: Of the laureates, I would highly recommend Sienkiewicz and Miłosz for their writing, and the Yiddish writer Singer for his literary importance.

Baltic Russia: Gogol's "The Overcoat" is right up there with Conrad's "To Light a Fire" as a short story with a devastating effect on my emotions.

Sweden: The Long Ships and Fredrik Bachman.

I would love to get to the following books from my shelves:

The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz
The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlof

I also have two German books I would like to get to, but they aren't really Baltic reads, but German.

All for nothing by Walter Kempowski
Where the desert meets the sea by Werner Sonne

There are some others that I would like to check out, but since I don't own them, will prioritize BOMBs.

ETA: Whoops, forgot Sweden!

>16 markon: I hope you like it, Ardene. It's a perfect book for the Baltic Sea theme.

Coincidentally, I read recently something that fits here, a book of poetry by the Latvian poet Imants Ziedonis:

 

As the stamp image hints a) he had great hair b) he may be described as a "nature" poet: a lot of feeling for the natural world, imbued with mystery and in communication with Slavic pagan gods.

Flowers of ice, OPD 1987, translated by Barry Callaghan

Never so enraptured

Never so enraptured by a single raspberry,
waking with the morning birds.

Lane of cherries and apples, a peony bed,
twilit fog, and blue heatherfields.
Amen, Annele! You come unto me as a door.
Open as a golden door.

Very nicely done! Thank you for all the suggestions. I have made a note of a few of them. However, I will start out with what is on my shelf, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I also have The Dark Heart: A True Story of Greed, Murder, and an Unlikely Investigator by Joakim Palmkvist which is a non-fiction. Hopefully there will still be time to find others through the library that will fit this category.

>17 labfs39: Kempowski is a very Baltic writer, with important roots in Rostock. I’m hoping to get to All for nothing or some more of his family saga.

>21 thorold: That's good to know. I know very little about German literature. It's a book I've wanted to read since SassyLassy reviewed it.

Wow...very well done, Lisa! I'll try to read a couple of books for this theme, probably one of the novels by Olga Tokarczuk, and possibly The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, if they apply.

Welcome aboard, Darryl. That would be great!

What an excellent selection of books for the theme! I'm planning to read at least one.

Karlsson on the Roof by Astrid Lindgren was a favorite of mine growing up.

While trying to reorganize a closet today, A Concise History of the Baltic States showed up. I’ll probably read some fiction as well but that sounds like the perfect title for this topic.

Thanks for setting up such a great thread, Lisa.

I'm eyeing The Year of the Hare and All for Nothing (even if it is German not Baltic) because both are in Wellington library and a button click away... I was hoping to make it past lunchtime on the first day of the year without you whacking me with book bullets!!

>13 SassyLassy: Thirding The Long Ships!!

Bought The Long Ships with Christmas gift card. Now to read it!

I jumped the gun and read The summer book by Tove Jansson on the plane last Friday. It was entertaining and made me laugh out loud in spots. Although it's not a funny book overall. Also gave me a small flavor of living on an island off the coast.

Adding my praises for Kempowski's All For Nothing, an extremely memorable novel.

Regarding Finland and Väinö Linna, while his The Unknown Soldier is indeed a great book, and one of the best war novels I've ever read, if you can get ahold of a translation of his Under the North Star trilogy in a language you can read, those books really present a stunning reading experience. As I've mentioned before here on LT, a bookseller in Helsinki told me that most Finns consider these books to represent Finnish history and national identity extremely well. I was lucky enough to get copies of all three books in English translation before the publishing company that offered them went out of business. Copies of those books are now fairly pricy online, especially, for some reason, the middle book. As noted above the trilogy follows a Finnish family from 1880 through 1950.

I went through a Gunter Grasse phase for a while. I loved everything I read by him. The Tin Drum was my favorite.

And I love Isaac B. Singer. His short stories are stunning. The Death of Methuselah, a collection he wrote later in life, I found particularly affecting. Last year I began a program of reading through Singer's novels chronologically by publishing date and read Satan in Goray and The Family Moskat. I highly recommend the latter. I've just started his third novel as my first reading of 2023, The Magician of Lublin.

These are some of the Swedish authors that I have on my special reading list. A list that consists of authors I find interesting to read. It’s a reading project I started sometime in the mid-90s. After some slumbering years I resurrected it three years ago. I started this project with the intention to read all titles of a few chosen authors that I particularly liked to read or was keen to read. From the original 8 authors, the project developed into containing about 40 authors. In the list below I have taken in those of them which is not mentioned in an earlier list in this thread (or at least wasn’t when I began to write the list) and whom has had some of their work translated into English.

Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793 – 1866)

One of the most fascinating Swedish authors. I have only read a hand full of titles by him so far. There are some translations. Among them, I would recommend:

Sara Videbeck: The Chapel
The Queen’s Diadem

Dan Andersson (1888 -1920)

An author, who’s writing have inspired and influenced many of the Swedish authors a half generation or so younger than him. Particularly the proletarian authors. He’s one of my personal favourites also. I have read all his published work. Not much is translated though:

Charcoal-burner’s ballad and other poems

Edith Södergran (1892 – 1923)

Passing away a century ago in tuberculosis, this young woman’s poems are utterly modern and well worth reading even today. There is as a collection of her work:

Love & Solitude

Elin Wägner (1882 – 1949)

A must read for anyone interested in women’s status and situation in the early 20th century. She held a chair in the Swedish Academy as well. One of the great names in Swedish literature. Ever since I first read her, her work has intrigued me. I have so far read her work which been published until 1917. Of the few translations that are there, I recommend:

The Norrtull Gang

Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1864 – 1931)

A poet that combines poems of love with those dealing with the deeper mysteries of life. Held a chair in the Swedish Academy and was posthumously rewarded with the Noble Prize 1931. I have read all of his published work. There is a selection of his poems:

Arcadia Borealis: selected poems of Erik Axel Karlfeldt

Eyvind Johnson (1900 – 1976)

One of great Swedish novelists of the 20th century. An author that could not be ignored if one wants to read Swedish literature. He held a chair in the Swedish Academy and was together with Harry Martinson rewarded with the Noble Prize 1974. The more I read of his work, the more I like it.
Among the translations that are there I would recommend:

1914
Return to Ithaca: the Odyssey retold as a modern novel
Dreams of Roses And Fire

Gunnar Ekelöf (1907 – 1968)

Perhaps the greatest of the Swedish poets of the 20th century. A poet I read and re-read. His poems are intoxicating, it’s like stepping into worlds that you even believed could exist. I have of course read all of his published works. There is a selection of his poems interpreted to English:

Gustav Fröding (1860 – 1911)

A poet who’s poems once rattled the good taste of the establishment in the late 19th century. A poet that tragically ended his days locked up in a sanatorium. He’s utterly accessible and lots of fun to read. He has an unmistaken humour. I have read all of his published works. There is only one of his collections poetry that has been interpreted. And that is his most famous one:

Guitar & concertina

Harry Martinson (1904 – 1978)

Another of the greatest Swedish authors of the 20th century. Both poet and novelist. An author that held a chair in the Swedish Academy and was rewarded with the Noble Prize together with Eyind Johnson. I have read all of his published works. I can recommend the following titles:

Flowering Nettle
The Road
Aniara

Hjalmar Bergman (1883 – 1931)

A Swedish classic and an author who still finds new readers. I’m for sure is one of them. As with many Swedish authors of yesterday there are not many translations, but among those that exit I can recommend:

Thy Rod And Thy Staff
The Markurells of Wadköping

Ivar Lo-Johansson (1901 – 1990)

One of the great Swedish proletarian writers of the 20th Centure. An author who’s writing lead to the abolition of the criticized “Statsystemet”. An author I surely enjoy reading.
I’m happy to see that two of his finest works has been translated:

Bodies of Love
Only A Mother

Jan Fridegård (1897 – 1968)

Also one of great Swedish proletarian writers of the 20th century. As a boy I grew up not far from where he lived. And my father got to know an old man that could tell many amusing stories about that time. I, myself was too young at that time to fully appreciate them, but my father has retold one or another of them that he could remember. Of the translations that exit I can recommend:

I, Lars Hård
A Vikings Slave’s Saga

Jesper Svenbro (1944 -

A poet that I enjoy very much to read. His poetry often circles around ancient Greece. He is currently holding chair nr 8 in the Swedish Academy. There is one selection of his poems:

Three-toed Gull: Selected Poems

Karin Boye (1900 – 1941)

An author who’s short live that she ended by her own hand didn’t stop her from be one ot the truly great poets and novelists of the 20th century. Her precise language his a joy to take part of. An author I have almost everything she has published. I can recommend:

Kallocain
Collected Poems

Lasse Söderberg (1931 -

A poet that I hold as one of the finest in the Swedish language and to my astonishing surprise there was a selection of his poems published just last year. A selection translated, or as dealing with poetry, interpreted by the American poet Carolyn Forché as one of the interpreters. She’s another poet that I hold in high regard.

The Forbidden Door

Moa Martinson (1890 – 1964)

Perhaps the foremost Swedish female proletarian author in the 20th century. I only started to read her books last year and was immediately taken away by her stories and the characters inhabiting those stories.

Women and Appletrees

Nils Ferlin (1898 – 1961)

If you asked a person in Sweden, whether he or she is a reader or not, to mention a poet they know of. They would probably mention Nils Ferlin. That’s how deep impact his poems have. His poetry has an unmistakingly tone and air of lightness, but one should not be fooled by it. Every word has carefully been chosen and put in the right order. I have read all of his published work.

With Plenty of Colored Lanterns

Pär Lagerkvist (1891 – 1974)

A poet, play writer and novelist who’s works has followed me through many years. He held a chair in the Swedish Academy and was rewarded with the Noble Prize 1951. His works centers often around the question about what faith and belief is and how it is manifested in a person. When my grandfather passed away over 30 years ago I choosed one of his poems to be put in the obituary. I choosed that poem because to me it put words to the kind of person my grandfather was. Pär Lagerkvist is one of the authors whom I have read all published works. There are also plenty of translations of his body of work.

The Dwarf
Barabbas
The Sibyl
The Death of Ahasuerus
Pilgrim at Sea
Guest of Reality

Per Anders Fogelström (1917 – 1998)

An author who in his novels set focus on the life of ordinary people. He’s renowned for his depictions of the Swedish capital – Stockholm. I got acquainted with his works just last year. And I must that I very much enjoy what have had read so far. There not so many translations of his work.

City of My Dreams

Stig Dagerman (1923 – 1954)

One of the profound voices of the modernists of the 1940s. His language demands utter concentration from the reader, yet it drags him into the stories and to the people who inhabits them. During his short live, which he ended by himself, he managed to write some of the most intriguing books in Swedish language. So far I have only read his two first novels. They have been translated.

The Snake
Island of The Doomed

Werner Aspenström (1918 – 1997)

Poet and play writer. Considered among writers such Karl Vennberg, Erik Lindegren and Stig Dagerman as on of the most tone giving authors of the 1940s. His poetry is a joyful play with words and their meaning. To read his poetry is to see the world through a kaleidoscopic eye that despite that never loses the touch with reality. I have read all of his published work. His poetry amuses me a lot. As with many Swedish authors there not much translated.

The Wind Itself

Just to mention a bunch of other interesting Swedish authors, here’s short list:

Sara Stridsberg (1972 -

The Gravity of Love
The Faculty of Dreams
The Antarctica of Love

Theodor Kallifatides (1938 -

Masters and Peasants

Tomas Bannerhed (1966 -

The Ravens

Rolf Aggestam (1941 – 2020)

Between Darkness and Darkness

Lars Norén (1944 – 2021)

Stupor
Three Plays

Magnus Florin (1955 -

Siblings

Carl Johan Vallgren (1964 -

The Horrific Sufferings of The Mind-reading Monster Hercule Barefoot: his wonderful love and his terrible hatred

Documents Concerning Rubashov The Gambler: a novel

>32 JorgenHolst: Thank you so much for this, Jörgen! It's so nice to have a Swede weight in with a native perspective. I especially appreciate all the poets you included as I know very little about poetry in any language.

I've started two books that pertain to the theme read: Nativity Poems by Leningrader Joseph Brodsky, and The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz. The latter is a an attempt by the author to explain the initial lure of totalitarian regimes to intellectuals after WWII, before reality sunk in, and those who could fled.

Edited to add: the emigration was common across the Baltic States that got swallowed up by Big Brother.

I've just finished The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer

We are in Poland in the early 20th century. Poland is still part of the Russian Empire rather than independent, and the Czar is still on his throne in Moscow. Occasional revolutions against the occupiers rock Poland, but for the most part the Poles live life resigned to dealing with their Russian occupiers, who seem to intrude on their lives on a daily basis very little. Yasha Mazur lives in the Eastern Polish city of Lublin. In fact, he is known as the Magician of Lublin. He is a master of slight of hand, hypnotism and acrobatics. Cards, both marked and unmarked, fly from his fingers. Never a lock has he been confronted with that he could not spring open in a few seconds. He is known, in fact as The Magician of Lublin, and his name is known around the countryside and as far as the great city of Warsaw. Tasha things himself an honest man. Although he is pals with the members of the thieves brotherhood in Lublin, who clamor at him to join their ranks ("With your skills, you could skim the cream right off the top!"), Yasha refuses to use his talents for crime. Monogamy, however, is another issue. Yasha has a loving wife, Esther, who waits patiently at home for him during his long performing road trips, even knowing that he has mistresses along his route. Yasha has a mistress in Lublin and has been having a longterm affair with his young performance assistant. Most alluring of all is the beautiful widow in Warsaw, Emilia. Professionally, Yasha should be at the top of the world. He is held back only by the fact that he is a Jew in Poland. Though he is well known, the very best theaters are closed to him, and the fees his manager is able to obtain for him are well below what his status should be bringing. Emelia is the well-meaning temptress. In Western Europe, or even in America, she tells Yasha, such antisemitism is no longer paramount, especially if he were to convert. Yasha must forsake Esther once and for all, run off to France or England with Emelia and her teenage daughter, where, once he has converted, they will be married. The problem is that it will all take money that neither of them have. Yasha believes in God, and identifies as a Jew, but has very little use for the trappings of Orthodox Judaism. Until, that is, he wanders into a synagogue a couple of times during the story and finds himself moved by the fervent belief of the worshippers, whose prayers remind him of his childhood in his father's house, where religion was all encompassing.

So here are the questions of practice and morality that Singer sets up for us in the early pages of this exhilarating blast of a novel, utilizing his standard whirlwind style of prose that crams details into each setting that serves to drop his readers straight into the maelstrom of daily life on the streets of urban Poland and in the minds of his characters. Singer skillfully sets up these choices for Yasha, the choices that must be made between fame and love and pleasure on the one side and loyalty, self-respect and morality on the other. Can Yasha really abandon Esther, repay her for her years of love, forbearance, understanding and emotional support in this cruel manner? Can he turn from his people and from the religion of his father, all he's ever known and the way he's defined himself for a lifetime and join the persecuting others in order to get ahead? Can he cross the firm line he's drawn for himself and use his talents to steal the money he needs to gain his goals of riches and fame in a foreign country? It is Skinner's great skill that all of these choices are seen as human choices, the moral questions that each of us, in some manner or other, are more than likely to confront. Skinner, in the telling, does not moralize, but instead shows us Yasha wrestling with these issues, as Jacob wrestled with the angel. And we do not get the idea that, no matter which decisions Yasha makes, Singer is going to cast judgement. As readers we feel confident that Tasha, the Magician of Lublin, is alive enough, and self-aware enough, to steadfastly judge himself, should the need arise.

I love the cover with it's imagery of Leningrad in the snow.



Nativity Poems by Joseph Brodsky, translated from the Russian by various poets
Collection published 2001 (poems written between 1962-1995), 113 p. 3*
Note: this was a bilingual edition with the Russian and English on facing pages

Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940, survived the Siege of Leningrad as a small child and suffered some medical issues as a result of famine. At the age of fifteen, he quit school and held a number of odd jobs, from working in a morgue to being a geologist assistant. He also began writing poetry, and by age eighteen was starting to be known. In 1960 he became the protégé of Anna Akhmatova. He taught himself Polish so that he could translate Czeslaw Milosz and English so he could translate John Donne.

Brodsky fell in love with a young painter named Marina Basmanova and their relationship continued even after his exile. Unfortunately Basmanova had another suitor, who is probably the one who denounced Brodsky. In 1963 Brodsky was harassed, interrogated, put in a mental institution twice (a common practice with Soviet dissidents), and then arrested. At his trial he was sentenced for "social parasitism" for not having a proper job, but having delusions of being a poet. He was sentenced to five years hard labor in the subarctic. The eighteen months he spent there were actually fairly good ones for him, as he was able to live alone in a tiny cottage—privacy being a luxury in Soviet Russia. His sentence was commuted in 1965, thanks in part to becoming a bit of a cause célèbre in the West.

In 1967 Brodsky and Basmanova had a son, Andrei. In 1971 Israel twice invited Brodsky to emigrate, but he wished to stay in Russia. Finally in 1972 Soviet agents physically put Brodsky on a plane to Austria with orders not to return. W.H. Auden helped Brodsky get asylum in the US, where he eventually became a US citizen. He worked as a professor at many prominent colleges, was awarded the Nobel in 1987, and became Poet Laureate of the US in 1991. After the collapse of the USSR, his son, Andrei, visited and they resumed their relationship. Brodsky died in 1996 of a heart attack at the age of 56.

Although born into a historic Russian Jewish rabbinic family, Brodsky always felt himself to be Christian. In an interview included in Nativity Poems, he says he would probably be Calvinist, because of the focus on judging oneself. Every Christmas season, he tried to write a poem. This book is a linear collection of these poems from 1962-1995. They were translated by a variety of poets, including Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. In them, Brodsky explores themes of time (starting at a fixed point—the birth of Christ) and space (moving in until you are in a "cave"). I thought that the poems became more sophisticated over the years, reflecting his growth as a poet. The collection as a whole did not hold a lot of interest for me, however, as the poems deal exclusively with Christian Gospel images.

there you guys are; had trouble finding you. Im in, let me check out the recommendations stay tuned

I read King Olaf Trygvason's Saga in my college Scandinavian Lit course Need to see if i still have it Remember enjoying all the Sagas.

>20 Tess_W: oh I readthe one hundred old man and loved it! may need to reread it

>32 JorgenHolst: wow! what a fantastic contribution to this thread! I am overwhelmed by choices! Wondering about Return to Ithaca: the Odyssey retold as a modern novelDreams of Roses And FireIm a big fan of retellings, but notice that the reviews here are in swedish. Is this book in English

>1 labfs39: Lisa thank you for all your hard work. Im looking at the book of jacob which Im also reading for the Historic Fiction challenge,the summer book the long ships, the wonderful adventures of Nils Also tempted to reread the moomins, loved them as a kid but might not have time to do so

>40 cindydavid4: I heartily recommend The books of Jacob, but it is a little off-topic for the Baltic, as it’s set at the opposite end of what was then Poland, now Ukraine.

>41 thorold: My bad, Mark, as I listed all the Polish Nobel Laureates in my post on Poland.

>41 thorold: oh ok, Im reading it anyway for the historic fiction challenge

A short Danish book read on the train yesterday to make a start on this theme. I've previously read and enjoyed two other books by Nors: Mirror, shoulder, signal and So much for that winter.

Wild swims : stories (2018; translation 2020) by Dorthe Nors‬ (Denmark, 1970- ), translated from Danish by Misha Hoekstra

  

A collection of short, enigmatic stories about people who are not quite at home in the world, in which the real thing that's going on often seems to be somewhere in the background, just hinted at in a passing phrase that you might almost miss the first time you read it.

The man in the opening story "In a deer stand" is stuck in a forest, injured and waiting for rescuers who might never arrive, but his real concern is with someone called Lisette who seems to have become the third person in his marriage; in the title story "Wild swims" a woman imagines swimming illegally in the moat of a fortress, but finds the necessary contact with other people involved in the experience of using a municipal swimming pool every bit as wild and dangerous. And so on in the other twelve stories squashed into this 120-page Pushkin Press book: Nors keeps on turning everyday reality into something strange and challenging.

>39 cindydavid4: Thanks Cindy. The book is translated from Swedish to English. Return to Ithaca... is the English title. If you want to get hold of this book somehow use the English title if you want read it in English. If want to read it in Swedish, the title isStränderna svall.

>45 JorgenHolst: ok thanks!

Günter Grass was a German who grew up in Danzig/Gdánsk and moved to West Germany after 1945. He wrote about his home city and the Baltic coast region in several of his most important books, especially the Danzig trilogy and The flounder. This is a later short book where he looks at Gdánsk around 1989-1991:

Unkenrufe: Eine Erzählung (1992; The call of the toad) by Günter Grass (Germany, 1927-2015)

  

Alexander and Alexandra are strangers who get into conversation after they bump into each other at a flower stall in the Dominican market hall in Gdánsk on All Souls' Day 1989. One thing leads to another, a cemetery visit is followed by a mushroom (Steinpilz/porcini) supper, and the two of them also cook up, first, an interesting business idea, and second, what turns into a serious relationship. They are both widowed and around sixty, and they were both exiled in their teens by the border-changes of 1945, he as a German from Danzig/Gdánsk and she as a Pole from Wilno/Vilnius. Their sharing of family memories leads them to the grand scheme: a service to allow exiles like their parents and themselves to profit from the end of the Cold War and seek burial in the places where they came from.

The German-Polish-Lithuanian Funeral Company soon becomes a reality: they are clearly tapping into a serious demand, and the money starts rolling in. And of course it soon starts going wrong, the idealistic notions of reconciliation in death are overtaken by the demands of free-market capitalism, and Alexander and Alexandra find themselves repelled by the monster they have created.

Grass, of course, enjoys nothing more than being the lonely pessimistic toad raining on the West German parade of reunification and the end of the iron curtain. He had great fun in those days, when he was being attacked in editorials and political speeches practically non-stop. And it probably gave him a certain satisfaction to have been largely right about all the things that the free market was going to smash up in the former socialist states. He didn't quite manage to predict the rise of populist nationalism in places like Poland and Hungary, but he did put his finger on a lot of the external causes of that trend. And this is also a lively story, with a lot of detail about Gdánsk and the way its German and Polish sides come together, and some entertaining characters like the octogenarian Erna Brakup with her felt hat and antediluvian Danzig-German dialect, or the British-Bengali Mr Chatterjee, who is developing a pedal-rickshaw empire across Polish cities and takes over part of the Lenin Shipyard to build his own rickshaws.

I am looking for the best English translations of Selma Lagerlöf. Mostly I am finding those by Velma Swanston Howard. Have others found more recent, better translations that they would recommend?

This is a book I've been meaning to get to for ages. My mother is a big Kempowski fan, but I've only read two of his novels up to now: the standalone novella Mark und Bein, which looks at similar themes to this book from a perspective of hindsight, and Aus großer Zeit, the first book of his big family saga about his Buddenbrooks-like merchant ancestors in Rostock.

This was his last novel, and is one of his best-known books. It's set in former East Prussia, now north-east Poland and the Kaliningrad region of Russia:

Alles umsonst : Roman (2006; All for nothing) by Walter Kempowski (Germany, 1929-2007)

  

Kempowski's epic final novel takes on the big subject of the evacuation of Germans from East Prussia during the Soviet advance into the region in the winter of 1945. This was one of the most traumatic moments of the war for German civilians: something like 750 000 people had to flee their homes, and nearly half of them were killed on their way to the west by air raids, the sinking of refugee ships, or by cold, accident or disease. It's potentially a huge story, but Kempowski keeps his focus tight and shows us events, one detail at a time, mostly from the perspective of the twelve-year-old Peter von Globig, whose parents own a small country estate in East Prussia.

The drama of the evacuation itself is all packed into the last few chapters, and most of the book is devoted to building up a context for it, showing us how cracks are starting to appear in German self-confidence as rumours of a Russian advance over the frontier start to get stronger, and exploring how difficult it seems to be for any of us to accept that the stable world we are living in is about to be blasted away completely. The homes, businesses and families we've built up, the wars we've fought: surely that can't have been all for nothing? Even as the artillery starts to rumble in the background and a caravan of farm carts from further east is rattling past the front door, everyone is still making excuses for postponing departure, and Peter is busy playing with his train set and his microscope.

Kempowski spent much of his life collecting ordinary people's memories, and this comes out in the wealth of everyday detail that he uses to illuminate the distorted world on the edge of the abyss: BDM-girls sent out to assist German Mothers-to-be, HJ-lads sweeping snow, forced labourers from the occupied countries doing most of the real work, the self-important block-warden using denunciation to get even with all the people he resents, bureaucrats constantly trying to invent order for the chaos around them by issuing it with papers and permits, the enforcing of rules that have long lost their purpose. Even in the midst of the panic, this is still a world where saying "Good morning" would be seen as an act of reckless subversion: Kempowski uses the insane way that people still hammer on the official "Heil Hitler!" greeting as an ironic Leitmotif throughout the book.

A hugely impressive book, but a surprisingly fine and delicate one too.

>48 labfs39: I read Gösta Berling in the Penguin translation by Paul Norlén from 2011 — that seemed to read pretty well, I didn't have any complaints about it, but I haven't done a comparison with earlier ones.

>49 thorold: Terrific review of a book that, as you know, I loved.

Starting summer house and am rather smitten with it.. Perfect follow up to previous book, well written and much lighter!

I posted in my CR thread and the Nobel Challenge group about a “two for the price of one” read of Harry Martinson and Eyvind Johnson, the Swedish writers who shared the 1974 Nobel. Both very interesting working-class writers, as >32 JorgenHolst: already said above.

My original post is here (I didn’t think it right to triple-post it):
https://www.librarything.com/topic/346921#8048496

This is a book I discovered in >6 labfs39: above and immediately ordered
crossposted from my CR thread

FINLAND



Compartment No 6 by Rosa Liksom translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (2014)
first published as Hyttu Nro 6 in 2011
finished reading January 17, 2023

It is roughly 6250 km by train from Moscow to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. A good train can make the trip in four days. Most Russians do not travel on good trains.

A young woman boarded a standard train in Moscow. She stowed her luggage in her four-berth third class compartment, grateful she had it to herself. Just as the train was about to leave, a thickset man joined her in the compartment for the duration. Compartment No 6 is the story of their odyssey.

The woman is never named, always being referred to as 'the girl'. The man, a self confessed Stakhanovite, speaks his name twice: once at the beginning of the trip and once at the end. Otherwise, he is 'the man'. Together, they are two specks on the vast landscape of the dying Soviet Union in 1986.

The girl had come to Moscow from Finland three years earlier to attend university. Her father had cried when she told him what she was doing. Things didn't go well in Moscow. She drifted into a life with her boyfriend's family. Now that too was gone. Mitka was in an asylum, pretending insanity to escape being sent to Afghanistan.

The man had served his time in the army and in jail. He appeared to be heading for work in Ulan Bator, a trip he had made before. Every morning he did his exercises between the bunks. Every day he drank. In between, he told the girl outrageous stories of sexual conquests, derided most nationalities, and occasionally propositioned her. The girl repeated to herself over and over how much she hated him.

The journey had to be endured somehow though, and they developed a sort of routine and truce. Sometimes nothing at all happened: The man and the girl sat silently. They sat in their own thoughts for a day or two.

Kirov, Tyumen, the closed city of Omsk where the train stopped because it needed 'a rest'. Novosibirsk, with a night off the train, Achinsk, closed Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and a two day stop. There her hotel room had ...pure white starched sheets on the bed, and bug spray in a corner of the bathroom. Ulan Ude, then Khabarovsk with another break in

A land killed by oil and heavy industry and discarded, a heavy city surrounded by crumbling slabs of steel-reinforced concrete, where women walk the back streets in high-heeled fur boots, left behind.

On and on until finally the border was reached after countless cups of tea and the endless search for food in perishing cold.

Liksom somehow manages to keep the reader on track through all the misery, as she draws he picture of the Soviet Union through her mix of the girl's silent observations and the man's experiences. This book won the Finlandia Prize, Finland's most highly regarded literary prize. I suspect it will be high on my list of books read this year.

______________________

Some of the things people told the girl along the way:

People can handle anything, when they have no choice Arisa, the woman in charge of the train compartment

Kirov was a great leader in Leningrad who was stabbed in the back by Stalin. First they slaughter their enemies together with their allies, then the allies together with their friends, then their friends. They draw lots for the rest. No one is innocent. A person is always dissatisfied with something, and it's always discovered. The guilty party is always found, and his offence, too, within a day of his arrest. Remember that. Arisa

Suffering is what gives life its flavour, thank God. Want and emptiness are good for you. An old man in a bus queue

review of the summer book here https://www.librarything.com/topic/347243#n8049634

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf, translated from the Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard
Original publication 1906 and 1907 (two parts), later combined. English translation 1907, Project Gutenberg 2004, 4*

In 1902 the National Teachers Association of Sweden commissioned Selma Lagerlöf to write a geography book for students. She spent several years studying bird and animal life before writing her internationally famous book about the boy who travels across Sweden with a flock of wild geese.

Nils is a naughty child, and his parents despair over his cruelty, caprice, and laziness. One day, when his parents are at church, Nils captures a tomten (an elf-like creature that looks after the welfare of the farm) and threatens it. As punishment, the tomten turns Nils into one as well. Nils runs outside and discovers he can understand the speech of the birds and animals. When a flock of wild geese fly overhead, a tame gander flies after them, carrying Nils with him.

Thus begins the adventures of Nils as he flies north to Lappland with the geese on their summer migration. His adventures are accompanied by descriptions of the Swedish countryside, often interlaced with legend and tales that make it easy, even for a non-Swede such as myself, to remember. In addition to the topography, Lagerlöf includes information about the habits of animals, the types of plants that grow in each habitat, and information about the types of industry common to each area. The result is a wonderful mix of fact and fiction that reads like adventure but imparts a tremendous amount of information. And Nils returns home a wiser and much nicer little boy.

Originally published as two books, I read them back to back, as the English translation was published as one volume.

My first entry into the Baltic Sea Region is Oblomov, written by Ivan Goncharov, translated by Stephen Pearl, with a forward/preface by Galya Diment. Is Oblomov the story of a lazy dreamer or of a person suffering from deep depression, or both? Oblomov can do nothing but lay in bed all day and dream and eat. At one time his family owned substantial estates, but they have fallen into such disrepair that Oblomov has had to take rooms in a less than desirable area of town because his estates are inhabitable. He does meet a woman, whom I think he did love, but he was unwilling or unable to continue the relationship because the effort was too great. At least half of the book was the essence of Oblomov's dreams, musings of a utopia. Oblomov appears to have a good friend, in Stolz, who was German. Stolz whips Oblomov's estates into order and takes over management of said estate. I'm sure there is some symbolism there, but of what I'm unsure as this was published in 1867 and hence too early for any reference to Lenin. The "action" takes place in St. Petersburg.

Goncharov was born in Simbirsk, a small town on the Volga. He boarded at the University of Moscow before taking a job in St. Petersburg, serving in the Ministry of Finance and in the Ministry of Censorship. He wrote 3 major novels and at the center of all is an easy going, dreaming, philosopher. Goncahrov also served as the secretary to a Russian admiral and made a trip to Japan in the 1850's. The author died and was buried in St. Petersburg. Due to this novel, there is a Russian term, oblomovsky, which describes, in general, a lazy person, usually a serf; although Oblomov was from the intelligentsia.

What did I think of the book? Probably what the author intended! Oblomov was a lazy day-dreamer who, had he not had inherited money or estates, would have been on the streets. At 654 pages this book was too nebulous and repetitious for me.

>57 Tess_W: Fantastic review of a book I've never read but once owned. What happened to it, I wonder...

>58 labfs39: TY!

I’m reading Lucky Per, which is definitely one of those “why weren’t we told about this?” novels. Not translated into English until the centenary of Pontoppidan’s Nobel Prize! But it’s so good that I’m advancing very slowly. Definitely up there with Buddenbrooks and Madame Bovary.

I’ve got Øsebol, a Jaan Kross novel and Compartment No.6 on my stack of library books, too, I don’t know if I’m going to get to all of those without extending the loan…

This is Per describing his arrival in Berlin from the opening of Chapter 11 (Naomi Lebowitz’s translation):

I staggered into a carriage, delivered up my suitcase, and gave the order to the driver: "Hotel Zimmerman, Burgstrasse" — that's the hotel your uncle recommended to me. But the driver stared at me and repeated in his Berlin dialect, "Bu'straasse? Bu'straasse?" He shook his thick beer-barrel head: "Kenn's nicht." A couple of other drivers came up. "Bu'straasse? Bu'straasse?" they repeated, and, all together, shook their heads. "Kenn's nicht." And there I was.
Then, one of them stuck his finger in the air and cried out, "Ah! Burrgstrraasse!" And with that brusque roll of the drum, I first woke up. Now I felt I had really come away from home, and with this initial foreign experience I realized that a Dane who intends to move about and abroad should develop his sense of consonants.

>60 thorold: I've downloaded Lucky Per to my kindle and will start it soon. Thanks for pushing me over the edge on this one.

Same here. I'll look for Lucky Per.

>60 thorold: This also sounds good to me. And my library has it, so I will put it on the list when I get some other books finished.

>60 thorold: finished, ten days since the last book, though. Highly recommended!

Lucky Per (1905; translation 2010) by Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark, 1857-1943) translated to English by Naomi Lebowitz

  

Henrik Pontoppidan was a star in his own time, who shared the 1917 Nobel prize with his (possibly even more forgotten) compatriot Karl Gjellerup. Introducing this translation, Garth Risk Hallberg lists Ernst Bloch, György Lukács and Thomas Mann among his more prominent fans. He fits into the "Modern Breakthrough", a Scandinavian modernist cultural and political movement centred around the critic George Brandes. But he's practically unknown in English: he seems to have been forgotten by translators after the second part of The promised land came out in the 1890s, and even his Nobel didn't revive interest: English-speaking readers had other things to think about in 1917. His best-known novel, Lykke-Per, which Danish readers count as one of the top Danish novels of all time, had to wait over 100 years to be translated (but there are now two translations: a new one by Paul Larkin appeared in 2018).

Lykke-Per starts out as a classic Bildungsroman, with a very Balzacian hero: Per is good-looking, attractive to both men and women, self-confident, ambitious, more than a little bit naive, and quite heartless. And everything in his life seems to be falling into place for him. But he's not the Lucien de Rubempré of 1880s Copenhagen: although he mixes with the intellectual and artistic disciples of Dr Nathan (an affectionate caricature of George Brandes), he's an engineer, with ambitions to develop canals and wind and wave energy (Pontoppidan didn't know quite how far ahead of his time he was here!). In Denmark in the decades after the Prussian invasion, technical innovation was controversial: the older, conservative generation were inclined to draw in their heads and keep Denmark small, backward and obscure, avoiding catching the eyes of anyone in Berlin.

More to the point, Per is a Lucien who has to live in a world that knows about Kierkegaard, Ibsen and Nietzsche. Like Pontoppidan, he is the son of a pastor from a small town in Jutland. He has broken off his connection to this pious Grundtvigian-Lutheran background and sees himself as a free agent and an agnostic, but of course it isn't as easy as that: the temptation to slip back into that cosy, secure world keeps stalking him, and he's never as confident as he seems. Eventually, things catch up with him, and he takes the Kierkegaard-like step of breaking an engagement for religious reasons, but of course even that is not the end of the story...

There's a wealth of very interesting local and period detail going on around the psychological story, of course, and there are a lot of very strong minor characters, especially Jakobe Salomon, the Jewish heiress who falls deeply in love with Per despite her strong misgivings about his character, and who is the one woman he has feelings for that go beyond the merely sentimental or sexual. She is educated, intelligent, resourceful and single-minded in achieving the things she wants to get done, a fierce critic of organised religion, and generally miles ahead of poor Per. It's the tragedy of the Bildungsroman format that we have to go on following him in the last part of the book whilst Jakobe gets on with her life-work mostly offstage.

Definitely one of those "why weren't we told about this?" books!

Naomi Lebowitz's translation reads very naturally, on the whole, although as in any translation there were occasional things I wanted to quibble with: a slightly too recent English idiom, perhaps, or a word used in a sense that felt more German than English.

---

After finishing this last night, I felt the need to recalibrate my ideas of normal Danish life, so I settled down to watch Thomas Vinterberg's wonderful 1998 film Festen...

LITHUANIA

I came across Between Shades Of Gray by Ruta Sepetys when looking for books about Lithuania and was happy to see it listed in the introduction to this thread, too, so I thought I might as well start posting in this group after lurking for ages!



"Between Shades Of Gray" by Ruta Sepetys
First published in 2011
Rating: 4 1/2 stars - ****°

"Between Shades Of Gray" was written by Ruta Sepetys, a Lithuanian-American author who did extensive research while working on the novel. It is classified as Young Adult, which is apparent in the language and the perspective of the main character, Lina, but this did not diminish the reading experience. In contrast, I felt that the character's voice was stronger and more authentic because of this because it was in line with her age.

Lina, her younger brother and her mother are deported from Kaunas in Lithuania to a work camp in Siberia. The novel relates the long journey in a cattle train to the camp, the events in the camp and more - I am not describing the further plot to avoid spoilers.
This book will stick with me for a very long time because of its characters, but also because I learned so much about the events under Stalin at the time. Of course I learned about it at school, but that was almost two decades ago, and the focus was not on the Baltic countries.

I read this almost in one sitting, within one day, because I just couldn't stop! The reason that it is not quite a five star read is because the ending felt a bit abrupt and I would have liked to meet Lina for real once more, and not only through the capsule that is found in the 1990s, although the afterword explains this choice. I also felt that sometimes Lina was a little bit too brave and adventurous to make it credible, and these were instance where it did indeed feel strongly like YA, but it is only a minor point of criticism in an otherwise excellent novel.

This one caught my eye in >54 SassyLassy:'s post above — as everyone knows, I can't resist a good train journey. It doesn't really have much to do with the Baltic, since it starts in Moscow and ends in Ulan Bator, but I have read very little by Finnish writers. My library had it in Dutch.

I'll keep it short, as there's not really much to add to SassyLassy's excellent review. I noticed on the Wikipedia page that there's a 2021 film version which won a prize at Cannes: I'll have to look out for that.

(If anyone wants a German novel set in Finland, though, I can recommend Blaue Frau : Roman by Antje Rávik Strubel, which I read for the prizewinners theme last quarter.)

Coupé No 6 (2010; Hytti nro 6 /Compartment No.6) by Rosa Liksom (Finland, 1958- ), translated from Finnish to Dutch by Annemarie Raas

  

This is the classic set-up of two fundamentally incompatible people trapped together for an extended period and forced to learn to get along, but it's far from being a silly romantic comedy. We're in the dying Soviet Union in the uncertain weather of a mid-1980s spring, where the Finnish postgrad archaeology student Anna finds herself sharing a compartment on the seemingly endless train journey from Moscow to Ulan Bator with the rough-hewn construction worker Vadim Nikolaevich.

Vadim — whom the narrator only ever calls "the man" — soon reveals himself as unpleasant company in all sorts of ways. He's a violent misogynist who is proud of beating his wife only in private, frequents prostitutes, drinks far too much, seems to have killed a few people with his flick-knife, and is forever telling stories that are clearly designed to shock Anna, even if they aren't always strictly true. But he does have a very sure sense of how to survive in the complicated world of Soviet semi-legality through which they are travelling, and he seems to feel an obligation of hospitality towards Anna. She's travelling to get a breathing-space from a complicated situation in Moscow, and she seems to be almost grateful for his unwanted attentions as a distraction from all that she's left behind.

A wonderfully convincing portrait of Soviet Russia at a very specific moment in history, obviously observed in detail at first-hand, and performing the difficult trick of mixing a travel book with a novel without the joins ever becoming too obvious.

---

Negative points for the cover-art of this Dutch edition, though: which idiot had the idea of using a stock photo of a 1960s British train compartment? It looks absolutely nothing like a Russian sleeping-car...

The Dark Heart: A True Story of Greed, Murder, and an Unlikely Investigator by Joakim Palmkvist, Agnes Broomé (Translator), narrated by Ulf Bjorklund



I am a true crime (non-fiction) fan in the U.S. Glad to finally get to one outside of the U.S. This story picks up in 2012 when millionaire landowner Goran Lundblad went missing in Sweden. There was absolutely no evidence, not even a body, and the case went cold. Police did consider the oldest daughter and her partner as the prime suspects. Things are done differently in Sweden than what I was familiar with and that is what made the story interesting to me. In Sweden, so I conclude, when a person goes missing, there is a preliminary police investigation. Once that is complete and no body is located, their investigation is complete, until/unless more evidence is forthcoming. There is an all volunteer organization called Missing People. Missing people form search teams and commence hunting for those missing. According to 2010 statistics, approximately 8,000 people go missing in Sweden each year, most are located. Missing Persons combs physical areas such as drainage ditches, forests, fields, caves, etc. This story centered around Therese, who at one time was a fashion model, but lately was a stay-at-home mom. She liked the challenge and her husband was able to stay with the children so she occasionally took on the hunt. She trained and organized other volunteers and directed the hunt for Mr. Lundblad. To me, she played a dangerous game by getting involved (platonically) with one of the prime suspects. Therese practiced what she called "Intuitive interrogation strategy, which validate the other person, then present alternatives. That is what makes people talk. And some talk more than others.” I wont' summarize more so as to not give away the story. I very much enjoyed looking at how another country's judicial system works. The author "covered" the story with facts and details, yet at the same time did not allow the story line to grow old. Interesting to note that in Sweden the maximum sentence for murder is 18 years, assuming there is no torture or pain involved.

Joaquim Palmkvist, is a graduate of Lund University, where he studied political science. He went to graduate school in London where he majored in journalism and then returned to Sweden. Mr. Palmkvist writes for Swedish newspapers, radio programs, and films. He writes both fiction and non-fiction. Palmkvist has written Maffiakrig (2011), and told the story of serial killer Peter Mangs in Äventyr i Svenssonland (2015).

I'm always a sucker for a rural oral-history compilation, and this particular one was hard to resist, as it happens to be set a short distance from where my Swedish relatives live. I found out about it through Lisa's intro above, and it turned out that the library had a copy in Dutch (there's an English translation out as well, and no doubt German and French too):

Osebol (2019) by Marit Kapla (Sweden, 1970- ), translated from Swedish to Dutch by Janny Middelbeek-Oortgiesen

  

Osebol is an isolated hamlet of about forty houses in the north of Värmland, not far from the Norwegian border. People used to live from logging, hunting and subsistence-farming, but nowadays there are few jobs, and young people have to go elsewhere for school or work. The shop has closed, the bridge needs repairs, and the population is getting older rapidly.

Journalist Marit Kapla, who grew up in Osebol, went back to the village in 2016 and 2017 to interview just about all the people who live there, old and young, natives and incomers (there are two Hungarians, a Pole, and two Dutch couples settled in the village, as well as a few urban Swedes and a stray Norwegian). She lets them talk about their background, their memories of growing up, the work they do or used to do, their problems and worries, what they feel about living in the countryside, and just about anything else that happens to come up.

There's no narrator's voice introducing, explaining and correcting. Everything we read in the book is told in the words of the local people, arranged into chapters house by house. To make us focus on the orality of what we're reading, Kapla has laid the text out on the page like free verse, using line-breaks instead of punctuation to give us a sense of the natural rhythms of speech. There are equally natural sudden changes of topic, as new ideas come into the speakers' minds, and where there are several family members being interviewed together, Kapla allows them to alternate or interrupt each other, presumably all according to the way the actual interview went.

It's an unusual strategy, and a risky one (a friend commented that it is strange to read about the decline of the logging industry in a book that must have consumed a good few hectares of timber), but it does seem to work: the characters of the individual speakers come across very strongly. I steamed though this at fairly high speed, as it needs to go back to the library, but I think it's a book to savour and come back to, really. And it will make you want to take that long-postponed trip to Sweden...

Also from Sweden:



Memories Look at Me: A Memoir by Tomas Tranströmer, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton
Originally published 1983, English translation 2011, New Directions, 60 p.

Tomas Tranströmer was born in Stockholm and raised by his mother after his parents divorced when he was very young. He loved nature, especially entomology, as a child, although his interests were varied. His grandfather indulged his passion for trains, and he filled sketchpads with drawings of things that interested him. He attended Södra Latin Grammar School, made famous in Ingmar Bergman's first film Hets/Torment. This small book of sketches from his childhood gives a glimpse both of a child's life in Stockholm in the 1930s and 40s, but also a sense of the poet's beginnings.

What we live through in school is projected as an image of society. My total experience of school was mixed, with more darkness than light—just as my image of society has become.

We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains it's rings. The sum of them is "me."

>69 labfs39: Another Baltic Nobelist I need to get to! That book sounds like a good way in.

---

This is the best-known novel by the distinguished Estonian writer Jaan Kross (cf. >5 labfs39: ), who spent time as a political prisoner of both the Nazis and the Soviets.

De gek van de tsaar (1978, translation 1992; The Czar's madman / Keisri hull) by Jaan Kross (Estonia, 1920-2007) translated from Estonian to Dutch by Ronald Jonkers

  

This historical novel is based on the life of Timotheus von Bock (1787–1836), an aristocratic landowner in Estonia whose liberal ideals and excessive devotion to honesty led him in 1818 to send Czar Alexander I a sixty-page memorandum setting out what was wrong with absolutist rule in the Russian Empire and proposing a new constitution based on accountability and the rule of law. Possibly not a completely wise move. Alexander seems to have been fond of Timo, who had been his aide-de-camp as a young man, so instead of having him charged with treason he went for the milder option of declaring him insane and locking him up in solitary confinement in a gloomy fortress for nine years (but with a piano in his cell!). After Alexander's death, Timo is released into house-arrest on his own estate, but he remains officially insane and therefore legally incompetent.

Timo's liberalism is also manifested in his marriage to Eeva Mättik, an Estonian who was a serf in domestic service when he met her. He has bought the freedom of Eeva's whole family, and sent her and her elder brother Jakob to be educated by a clergyman friend before they marry. Eeva is a very strong character in the novel, resourceful and tireless in her campaigns to prevent Timo from being forgotten about and eventually getting him released.

It is the nosy and cynical Jakob who narrates the story through his secret diary of his life with Timo and Eeva during the period of house-arrest. He takes care to give us the necessary context for Timo's "radical" ideas, which he classes as being almost as progressive as Magna Carta. Timo, after all, is a proud member of a social class that traces its origins back to the Teutonic Knights, and has spent the last six hundred years treating the people of the Baltic region as little better than beasts of burden. (Kross notes in an afterword that in addition to that, Timo almost certainly knew the family tradition that his grandmother was an illegitimate daughter of Peter the Great, and that he would thus consider himself to have more genuine imperial blood in his veins than Alexander.)

Of course, this book was written in the 1970s, and what Jakob tells us about abuses of absolute power, foreign oppression of Estonians, and the misuse of the mental health system to silence dissidents is clearly also meant as covert criticism of the current situation in the Soviet Union, and the Baltic States in particular. What he tells us about Timo's experience of imprisonment and solitary confinement has a very strong sense of personal experience about it.

I found this slightly unsatisfying in narrative terms because Kross is rather reluctant to go beyond the things we have actual historical evidence for, so for instance Jakob's imaginative solution to the mystery of Timo's death is only put forward as a very tentative hypothesis, and not followed up in any way. But it is very strong in giving us a picture of the social situation in Baltic states in the early nineteenth century and in analysing the complicated intersections between protest against an oppressive regime and real or simulated madness.

And another Baltic Nobel laureate. The poet Czesław Miłosz grew up in a Polish-speaking family in what's now Lithuania, and studied in Wilno/Vilna/Vilnius. As well as this book, I've got his memoir Native realm on the shelf waiting to go.

A lot of crossover with the Jaan Kross book I've just finished here, but also of the Wolfgang Leonhard memoir I read in October:

The captive mind (1953) by Czesław Miłosz (Poland, USA, etc., 1911-2004), translated from Polish by Jane Zielonko

  

Published two years after his definitive break with the post-war Polish state, this is the book where Czesław Miłosz investigates in detail how Stalinism affected the minds of people living in the parts of Europe that fell under Soviet domination after World War II. He looks in the abstract at a number of mental strategies he has identified for coping with totalitarian rule, and in the light of these he considers his own experience as a left-wing writer who lived through the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw and also looks at four other Polish writers (coincidentally called Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta) who accommodated themselves, or tried not to, in various different ways.

In the final chapters, Miłosz looks at the way the unpredictable individuality of the human mind keeps on undermining the "scientific" assumptions of totalitarian ideologies, and he devotes some time to making sure that his readers are aware of the scale of the horrors inflicted on the people of the Baltic states after the Russian occupations of 1940 and 1945 and the Nazi occupation of 1941. If you're going to have a single political system based on a Russian Centre, you'd better be prepared to put up with mass deportations, he's telling us.

Obviously some of this is very specific to the situation Miłosz was in in the early 1950s, but there are also a lot of frighteningly clear insights into the way people behave under pressure in the real world. And some prescient moments when he talks about the likelihood that the countries of Eastern Europe will rise up against Stalin and be crushed one by one, and about Catholicism as the main threat to Stalinism in Poland. Interesting too how Miłosz, who had seen all this at first hand, praises the insight of George Orwell, who hadn't.

>71 thorold: This sounds very interesting!

I just finished An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl. It's only the second Danish author I've read, having read Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg in pre-LibraryThing days. An Altered Light has two rough plotlines: the first half of the book is about her relationship with her husband and their infidelities. The second half is about the secret she learns from her mother about her father. The book takes place almost entirely within the protagonist's head, and has a dreamy quality. There was very little sense of place, and I felt it could have been set anywhere. The book was a gift and not something I would have picked up otherwise.

>73 labfs39: "There was very little sense of place, and I felt it could have been set anywhere."

It's frustrating to start reading a book because of an interest in the nationality of the author and/or the locale the story is supposedly set in, only to find that, as you say, the book has in fact no sense of place. I suppose one might credit an author with having a particular perspective on life/history/what-have-you based on his/her/their place of origin. But "having" and "providing" or two different issues.

I just finished readingSoviet Milk by Nora Ikstena and wrote a review. It is an interesting book and I enjoyed reading it but it was a little confusing. I bought a book when I was in Vilnius,Lithuania from a used book store called Tales of the Amber Sea. It was published in the Soviet Union, it has short stories from the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Very much enjoying the wonderful adventures of Nils

A Baltic book that caught my eye in the library. Maybe it's not the most obvious thing to read the autobiography of an author you only know from one novel (so far), but I did find The royal physician's visit very interesting. It's taken a little while to get through it, more because of minor distractions along the way than because it was a difficult read, I think. A lot more distractions to come in the next couple of months, too...

Een ander leven (2008; Ett annat liv / The wandering pine) by Per Olov Enquist (Sweden, 1934-2020) translated from Swedish to Dutch by Cora Polet

 

A third-person autobiography by the distinguished Swedish novelist and playwright. He talks about his literary career and the forces shaping his life, in particular his northern childhood and his struggle with alcoholism in the 1980s.

Enquist grew up with his widowed schoolteacher mother in a green-painted house in the remote village of Hjoggböle, near Bureå, about 1000km north of Stockholm. The village has produced a surprising number of celebrated writers: he puts this down to the effects of inbreeding, a practice that was sadly disappearing by his time, thanks to the introduction of the bicycle (a quip he frankly admits to having used in far too many interviews). The Enquist family belonged to a strict revivalist evangelical sect, and Per Olov was enrolled in the Swedish version of the Band of Hope as a small boy. He talks about the effect of growing up in the shadow of an elder brother, also Per Olov, who had died in infancy, and of his father, who died when Per Olov was six months old, leaving a last message exhorting the boy to grow up to be a Christian and a preacher. And of the frustration of not being allowed to go to the football matches that took place in the ungodly half of the village on Sundays.

And, of course, he went on to join in the radical left-wing student life of Uppsala around 1960, as well as becoming an athlete, a drama critic, a satirist and, later, a drinker. None of which would have gone down very well in Hjoggböle.

It reads like a frank and very open account of his life, full of self-criticism that varies in tone from amused to completely humiliated, but there is a lot of art about this as well: it's fairly obvious that there is a lot that he isn't choosing to tell us, and also that he makes quite sure we know all about his great successes as well. He tells us several times that he had only ever seen four plays before his paper made him a dramatic critic, but he also tells us that the play he cobbled together in a moment of inspiration after spending a term teaching American undergraduates about Strindberg was an overnight success. While he is telling us about his fiasco on Broadway, we also learn "by the way" about his close friendship with Ingmar Bergman. And so on.

The middle section of the book has a lot of detail and name-dropping about Swedish politics which is a bit dry for outsiders, but the childhood section and the last few chapters about his alcohol problems are very interesting reading for anyone, and there's also a lot along the way that lifts the curtain at least slightly on what it's like to be a writer who constantly faces the challenge to produce something new and meaningful out of his own inspiration. Very interesting.

>76 cindydavid4: I enjoyed it too. And I learned a lot of Swedish geography!

LITHUANIA

Translated from Lithuanian to English by Romas Kinka.



"In The Shadow Of Wolves" by Alvydas Šlepikas
Original Title: Mano vardas - Marytė
First published in 2011
Rating: 4 stars - ****

This novel deals with the wolf children - Wolfskinder, German children who lived in Eastern Prussia shortly after World War Two and crossed into Lithuania to find food to survive, or even to bring back to their families. The story starts with one such family, a mother and her five children, who try to survive the first winter after the end of the war. They are under constant thread of starving or freezing to death, of being raped or killed. While at first the reader gets to know the situation mostly from the mother's point of view, the story then follows some of the children who go to Lithuania, crossing the wilderness and meeting locals to find food and shelter. Some are welcoming, others are not. While at first Lithuania seems like some kind of paradise, it soon becomes clear that the locals have their own problems, too.
Chapter after chapter loosely follow each other, and there is no considerable structure, which mirrors the existence of the characters who live from day to day because they cannot look further. The writing is beautiful in parts, reminiscent of a fairytale, but it is sparse and harsh in others. The author first intended this to become a documentary, and it still shows - I could imagine the scenes as a film, it is cinematographic in its descriptions, evoking haunting images in the reader's mind. The ending comes very sudden, which left me wanting more. Likewise, some characters just disappear from the story and the reader does not learn anymore about them. While this is unsatisfying, I think that again, it mirrors the experience of the characters, who lost family members or friends, sometimes by sheer accident, without any chance to learn about their fate.

Germany | Lithuania | Russia

This quarterly topic made me think of Bobrowski again, whom I had always wanted to read after just reading a few of his poems years ago.



"Gedichte - Eine Auswahl" by Johannes Bobrowski
This edition ed. and publ. by Eberhard Haufe in 1990, poems written between 1941 and 1965
Rating: 4 stars - ****

This edition of Johannes Bobrowski's poems was published in 1990, in the still existing GDR, by Eberhard Haufe, who chose around 150 poems and also wrote an illuminating afterword.

Johannes Bobrowski was a German writer who was born in Tilsit/Sowetsk, a town close to Königsberg/Kaliningrad, now on the Lithuanian border. He was from a Christian family who were opposed to the Nazis, but still, he became a soldier. He served on the campaign in Russia and was later imprisoned there until 1949.
Because of these experiences, Bobrowski's main topic was the European east, its natural world, but also its history. Most of his poems deal with the Lithuanian/East Prussian landscape of the region where he grew up, or with the Russian landscape around Nowgorod, where he was stationed during the war. Bobrowski moved to Berlin after he returned from prison and lived there until his death, so with the exception of a few poems that were written in the 1940s, he wrote about the east from memory, and created a magical and unreal region. This was supported by his usage of the ancient name Samartia - a poetic version of the land, but not a perfect one, because there are the shadows of the war and of the holocaust. There are people who go to their death, buildings that are destroyed and decayed, there is a cold and dangerous feeling that disturbs the often lyrical descriptions of nature. Emotions of loss and guilt - both Bobrowski's personal guilt as a soldier, as well as Germany's collective guilt - influence these poems.

During his lifetime, Bobrowski was one of the few authors who were equally read and respected in both German states, despite dealing with the politically and morally difficult topics mentioned above, which were treated differently in the two Germanys. Bobrowski himself wanted to be just a 'German' writer and did not wish to pledge allegiance to one of the two, and he was successful in that. He was a friend of some of the most important writers of the time, such as Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson and Paul Celan.

Bobrowski's poems are often not easy to understand, as they are full of metaphors and images, as well as deeply intertextual. Some are dedicated or written in response to other writers (alive or long deceased), others reference myths and legends. His continuous use of enjambement, of neologisms and inversions creates a special rhythm that does not always feel natural. Despite the often dreamlike quality of his poetry, it is firmly rooted in reality, often being connected to specific places that are mentioned or described. The language often includes prefixes used in a surprising way and an unusual syntax, which builds an atmosphere that makes the reader feel that despite the beautiful nature, something is wrong. For sure, I have only scratched the surface of Bobrowski's work with these poems.

>80 MissBrangwen: That sounds interesting. I didn't know anything about Bobrowski. Thanks!

I've just been reading a small selection of Tomas Tranströmer's poems, For the living and the dead : poems and a memoir, but I don't really feel that I've worked out what he's about yet. Review in my other threads, FWIW.

been reading fair play another jansson work that is a quiet collection of short works of two women who have known each other forever,and live together. Lovely character study

>81 thorold: If I had known that For the Living and the Dead included both poems and his memoir, I would have gotten it instead of Memories Look at Me alone. From what you say though, these particular poems at least are skipable.

>82 cindydavid4: Thanks for mentioning Fair play Cindy. I may try to get this through interlibrary loan.

From my library stack, possibly my last entry for this theme...

Oorlogsdagboek 1939-1945 (2015; Krigsdagböcker 1939-1945 / A world gone mad) by Astrid Lindgren (Sweden, 1907-2002), edited by Kerstin Ekman, translated from Swedish to Dutch by Janny Middelbeek-Oortgiesen

 

Astrid Lindgren was a 32-year-old mother of two young children when the Second World War broke out, with a secretarial background and no very obvious signs that she would soon become a world-famous children's writer. But in September 1939 she did take up the slightly eccentric habit of keeping a diary dedicated to world events and her reaction to them, with her personal life and that of her family relegated to the margins. It was only after her death that the stack of wartime diaries came to light, stuffed with press cuttings and copies of interesting letters she came across in her war-work for the (secret) postal censorship office.

The diaries are a fascinating record of what the war looked like to an ordinary person reading the news in neutral Sweden — albeit one who read the news very carefully and was able to form a pretty good idea of the things she wasn't being told. It rather undermines our image of ourselves as a news-hungry generation. With only (local) newspapers and radio to fall back on, Lindgren knew a surprising amount about what was going on. And she had a huge amount of sympathy for the people it was happening to (especially in Finland, Norway, Denmark and the Baltic states) and a clear sense of how privileged she was to be living in the one place in Northern Europe that managed to stay out of the conflict. It was also fascinating to discover how the Pippi Longstocking stories emerged against the background of all the grief and destruction that was going on around her.

>85 thorold: I'll have to keep my eyes open for that one. Just my cuppa

That really does look interesting. There are some reasonbly priced copies on Bookfinder.com

Thank you all for joining in the Baltic Sea Reading Globally theme read, the first that I've hosted. I learned a lot and added many titles to my wishlist. I read four books for the challenge, all were new-to-me authors. Please feel free to continue adding comments and reviews to the thread. I know I've bookmarked it for future reference.

I also invite everyone to join Banned Books Around the World, the theme read for April-June.

>88 labfs39: brava Lisaa on your first time hosting! you did a great Job

And I think I will join that,thx

>88 labfs39: TY You did a great job and I have place too many on my WL!

Ive had a line in the world on my list for this thread but for some reason never got to it till now. Glad I did. I knew very little about Denmark (aside from Hans Christian Anderson and a certian depressed young prince) so decided to try this memoir of the authors trip up the coast. A google map helped guide me along . Really enjoyed her writing., makes me feel like that little girl with her feet standing in two seas, or dancing what looks like a version of the Hambo. I liked what Mark had to say "It's all very much like her fiction: on the surface it looks so delicately put together that a gentle breeze would be enough to scatter it, when in fact there's a lot of very well thought-out Danish engineering going on out of sight. "I now want to read some of her novels wild swim stories looks like a good start

>91 cindydavid4: Glad you enjoyed it! I liked her earlier story collection Mirror, shoulder, signal very much as well.

Another late entrant:

The Baltic : a history (2011) by Michael North (Germany, 1954- ), translated from German to English by Kenneth Kronenberg

  

(Author photo Greifswald University)

A useful, comprehensive history of the Baltic region from Viking times to 2010, reasonably well balanced between political, social, economic and cultural history. North writes like an old-fashioned academic historian, with a lot of verifiable facts and no speculation or padding, which is efficient and allows him to cover a remarkable amount of ground in 330 pages and create a very useful reference book, but the total absence of personality in the text makes it a bit soul-destroying if you try to read it cover-to-cover.

Obviously, if you have a book focussed on a sea, you have to decide how far inland you should allow yourself to go: North's approach seems to be to try to avoid writing a complete history of every country with a Baltic coastline, but to fill in enough context that we will know where we are. And he obviously assumes that we will be reasonably familiar with at least German and Russian history. We do get more background detail on Sweden, Denmark and the Baltic States. But in a book that covers the Thirty Years War in a couple of paragraphs, you need to stay pretty alert: blink and you will miss something vital... But it did tell me a lot of stuff I didn't know, or couldn't have put properly in context, so I found it very useful.

If I'd looked a little more carefully before buying this book, I'd have realised that Professor North originally wrote it in German, and I'd at least have been able to spare myself the rather pedestrian translation.

Another book coming in late, here, as I've continued my Isaac Bashevis Singer novel-reading project with The Slave, which takes us to late 17th century Poland. The opening setting is the remote rural mountains of southern Poland in the years immediately following the Chmielnicki (often spelled Khmelnytsky) Uprising, an invasion by Cossack forces in rebellion against Polish domination. In Jewish history, these events are known as the Chmielnicki Massacres, as the Cossack forces, aided often by the Poles themselves, perpetrated widespread and massive pogroms. Whole villages were essentially obliterated. Our protagonist, Jacob, is a survivor of one such attack on his native village, Josefov. His wife and three children, he believes, have been murdered, but instead of being killed himself, Jacob is captured and sold into slavery to Jan Bzik, a farmer in remote mountain town. Escape into the mountains, whose ways are unknown to him, means certain death, and the villages have sworn to kill Jacob on sight if he is spotted on the wrong side of the river that borders Bzik's land.

For five years Jacob spends his winters in a high mountain cabin tending to Bzik's cattle. His only source of food and water is what is brought up the mountain to him daily by Bzik's daughter, Wanda. Far from Jewish community and the holy books he loves, Jacob strives to maintain a pious Jewish life as best he can, and that include resisting the strong physical attraction that Jacob and Wanda feel for each other. Marriage is out of the question. Jacob would surely be excommunicated by the rabbis for cohabitating with a Gentile, and either or both of the two could be burned alive by the Church. Well, but as we know, such temptation cannot be resisted forever, and certainly not in fiction. And so our tale is launched. The Slave was first published in 1962 and allegorical references to the Holocaust are impossible to ignore. Highly recommended