Eriks Ādamsons’ 1937 collection of short stories is among the earliest works of short, Latvian modernist prose. It portrays humans as internally disharmonious beings, powerless before their subconscious and neuroses, their rational desires interrupted by random thoughts and irrational whims, all of this both deeply buried and liable to erupt in the most troubling and capricious ways. Ādamsons’ short prose confirms that modernism had arrived in Latvian fiction, placing the unusual, subjective, accidental, strange and ephemeral at the centre, but refraining from dispensing moral wisdom.
By Nora Ikstena
Nora Ikstena is one of the most prominent and influential prose writers in Latvia. Soviet Milk, shortlisted for the Annual Literature Award, Besa, Celebration of Life, and The Virgin’s Lesson are some of her best known novels. Ikstena is also a prolific author of biographical fiction, nonfiction, scripts, essays, and collections of short prose. Ikstena is co-founder of the International Writers and Translators’ House in Ventspils.