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Flesh-Coloured Dominoes
"Extraordinary and unforgettable characters" WORLD LITERATURE TODAY "Rich and many layered . . . fascinating" CHRISTOPHER MOSELEY When Baroness Valtraute von Bruegen's officer husband's body is severed in two she is delighted to find that the lower half has been sewn onto the upper body of the humble local Captain Ulste. She conceives a child only to see the return of her husband in one piece. What happens next is both indescribably funny and darkly painful. A beautifully written Surrealist novel-cum-political allegory, Flesh-Coloured Dominoes transports the reader between 18th-century Baltic gentry and the narrator's life in the modern world. The connection between the two narratives gradually becomes clear in a mesmerising fantasy of love, lust, and loss as Skijuns creates a work of sublime art that is funny, moving, enlightening and philosophical in equal measure. Translated from the Latvian by Kaija Straumanis
Nakedness
Set in the 1960s, Nakedness is the tale of a young man who has just completed his military service and gone straight to Randava to surprise Marika, the beautiful woman with whom he's been corresponding. The two have never met in person however, and when the young man arrives at her door, he quickly becomes entangled in a bizarre mystery: Marika claims that she has never written to him; in fact, she appears to be involved with someone else. And none of her flatmates will admit to sending the letters. Humiliated, he prepares to return to Riga, but is convinced by one of Marika's flatmates to stay a little longer - a decision that throws him even deeper into the web of conflicting relationships he has unwittingly entered. Each clue he uncovers only makes things more confusing, and eventually the young man's own secrets and mendacity are also revealed. Skujins is an original stylist capable of deploying acute psychological observation as well as clever and often witty imagery, and Uldis Balodis has managed to retain this in his excellent English translation.
The Book of Riga
A suicide attempt, staged to attract as much attention as possible, from the top of St. Peter’s Church, quickly evolves into an outlandish and absurd, televised spectacle... When a PA is invited into her boss’s office one day to observe a protest unfold, just as he predicts, in the streets below, she begins to suspect his powers of foresight might extend beyond mere business matters... Finally moving into the house of her dreams, on the island of Kīpsala, a single mother discovers a strange affinity with the previous occupant... Riga may be over 800 years old as a city, but its status as capital of an independent Latvia is only a century old, with half of that time spent under Soviet ru...
The Baltic States, Years of Dependence, 1940-1990
In this updated edition of their renowned The Baltic States, Romuald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera bring the story of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia up to the 1990s. The authors describe and analyze how the Baltic nations survived fifty years of social disruption, language discrimination, and Russian colonialism. The nations' histories are fully integrated and compared, and some notable differences between them are pointed out. With two new chapters, a revised preface, and an appendix on the end of Soviet domination, this expanded study covers a tumultuous period of political, economic, cultural, and ecological reform.
Nature and National Identity After Communism
In this groundbreaking book, Katrina Schwartz examines the intersection of environmental politics, globalization, and national identity in a small East European country: modern-day Latvia. Based on extensive ethnographic research and lively discourse analysis, it explores that country's post-Soviet responses to European assistance and political pressure in nature management, biodiversity conservation, and rural development. These responses were shaped by hotly contested notions of national identity articulated as contrasting visions of the "ideal" rural landscape.The players in this story include Latvian farmers and other traditional rural dwellers, environmental advocates, and professionals...
The Baltic States, Years of Dependence, 1940-1980
Geschiedenis van Estland, Letland en Litauen
The Baltic States
Describes and analyzes how the Baltic nations survived 50 years of social disruption, language discrimination and Russian colonialism, and the effect of the Baltic states' stubborn invincibility on the Soviet Union. The history of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are integrated and compared.
Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union
This book presents the first large overview of late Soviet religiosity across several confessions and Soviet republics, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Based on a broad range of new sources on the daily life of religious communities, including material from regional archives and oral history, it shows that religion not only survived Soviet anti-religious repression, but also adapted to new conditions. Going beyond traditional views about a mere "returned of the repressed", the book shows how new forms of religiosity and religious socialisation emerged, as new generations born into atheist families turned to religion in search of new meaning, long before perestroika facilitated this process. In addition, the book examines anew religious activism and transnational networks between Soviet believers and Western organisations during the Cold War, explores the religious dimension of Soviet female activism, and shifts the focus away from the non-religious human rights movement and from religious institutions to ordinary believers.
Cultural Heritage of East Central Europe
The concept of ‘culture’ is a relatively modern invention. It stems from the Latin term cultura meaning cultivation. Cicero was the first to use this word in a non-agricultural context. In his Tusculanae Disputationes he reflected on the ‘cultivation of the soul’ (cultura animi). Later this term was rarely used in this sense but as of the 17th century more and more authors considered culture an intellectual and not an agricultural phenomenon. Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) described culture as a vehicle overcoming natural barbarism. He was followed by German philosophers of culture. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity was as important as human rationali...
