Download or read book The Book of Riga written by Pauls Bankovskis and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 rule. Despite this, it has established itself as a vibrant, creative hub, attracting artists, performers, and writers from across the Baltic region. The stories gathered here chronicle this growth and on-going transformation, and offer glimpses into the dark humour, rich history, contrasting perspectives, and love of the mythic, that sets the city’s artistic community apart. As its history might suggest, Riga is a work in progress; and for many of the characters in these stories, it is the possibilities of what the city might become, more than merely what it is now, that drives the imagination of its people. This book is published with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia and The Latvian Writers Union. Foreword by former President of Latvia (1999-2007) Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. Translated from the Latvian by Kaija Straumanis, Suzanne McQuade, Uldis Balodis, Ieva Lešinska, Mārta Ziemelis and Žanete Vēvere Pasqualini.
Download or read book Soviet Milk written by Nora Ikstena and published by Peirene Press. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literary bestseller that took the Baltics by storm now published for the first time in English. This novel considers the effects of Soviet rule on a single individual. The central character in the story tries to follow her calling as a doctor. But then the state steps in. She is deprived first of her professional future, then of her identity and finally of her relationship with her daughter. Banished to a village in the Latvian countryside, her sense of isolation increases. Will she and her daughter be able to return to Riga when political change begins to stir? Why Peirene chose to publish this book: At first glance this novel depicts a troubled mother-daughter relationship set in the the Soviet-ruled Baltics between 1969 and 1989. Yet just beneath the surface lies something far more positive: the story of three generations of women, and the importance of a grandmother giving her granddaughter what her daughter is unable to provide – love, and the desire for life. 'Nora Ikstena is proving that Latvia is speaking in a bold and original voice.' Rosie Goldsmith, broadcaster and reviewer 'Nora Ikstena's fiction opens up new paths not only for Latvian literature in English translation but for English literature itself.' Jeremy Davis, Dalkey Archive Press
Download or read book The Case for Latvia written by Jukka Rislakki and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2008 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union - interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war - now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: "Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917", "Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family", "Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941", "Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia", "The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . ." True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.
Download or read book Five Fingers written by Māra Zālīte and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five-year-old Laura was born in one of Joseph Stalin’s prison camps in Siberia. When the book opens, she and her parents are on their long journey back to Latvia, a country Laura knows only from the exuberant descriptions that whirled about the Gulag. Upon her arrival, however, she must come to terms with the conflicting images of the life she sees around her and the fairytale Latvia she grew up hearing about and imagining. Based on the author’s life, and written in lush language that defies the narrative’s many hardships, Five Fingers tells the story of a girl who moves between worlds in the hopes of finding a Latvia that she can call home.
Download or read book High Tide written by Inga Ābele and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told more or less in reverse chronological order, High Tide is the story of Ieva, her dead lover, her imprisoned husband and the way their youthful decisions dramatically impacted the rest of their lives. Taking place over three decades, High Tide functions as a sort of psychological mystery, with the full scope of Ieva's personal situation and the relationship between the three main characters only becoming clear at the end of the novel. One of Latvia's most notable young writers, Abele is a fresh voice in European fiction, her prose is direct, evocative and exceptionally beautiful.
Download or read book Among the Living and the Dead written by Inara Verzemnieks and published by Pushkin Press. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerfully told memoir of family, separation, and the things left unsaid, in the wake of the Second World War Raised by her grandparents in the USA, Inara Verzemnieks grew up among expatriates, scattering smuggled Latvian sand over the coffins of the dead, singing folk songs about a land she had never visited. Her grandmother Livija's stories recalled the remote village in Latvia left behind, where she and her sister, Ausma, were separated during the Second World War. They would not see each other again for more than fifty years. Coming to know Ausma and the trauma of her exile to Siberia under Stalin, Inara pieces together her grandmother's survival through the years as a refugee, and her grandfather's own troubling history as a conscript in the Nazi forces. As she interweaves two parts of the family story in spellbinding, lyrical prose, she offers us a profound and cathartic account of loss and survival, resilience and love. Inara Verzemnieks teaches creative non-fiction at the University of Iowa. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
Download or read book Pietr the Latvian written by Georges Simenon and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man. His firm muscles filled out his jacket and quickly pulled all his trousers out of shape. He had a way of imposing himself just by standing there. His assertive presence had often irked many of his own colleagues. In Simenon's first novel featuring Maigret, the laconic detective is taken from grimy bars to luxury hotels as he traces the true identity of Pietr the Latvian. This novel has been published in previous translations as The Case of Peter the Lett and Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett. 'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray 'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian
Download or read book The Good Assassin written by Stephan Talty and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The untold story of a Latvian Nazi's gruesome crimes and an Israeli spy's epic journey to bring him to justice, a case that altered the fates of all ex-Nazis."--
Download or read book Green Crow written by Kristine Ulberga and published by Peter Owen Publishers. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Peter Owen World Series: BalticsInstitutionalized in an asylum, a woman with a record of hallucinations commits her life story to paper. She records, from the age of six, her earliest memories of a drunken and abusive father, the strange men her mother introduced to repair the family, the imaginary forest to which she would run for safety and, of course, the talking Green Crow who appeared when she most needed her. The Green Crow is a conceited, boisterous creature who follows the novel's nameless protagonist throughout her life, until the day that the crow's presence begins to embarrass her. Confined to a tedious domestic life, she is desperate to hide the crow's very existence. Failing to do so, she winds up in a psychiatric hospital. Can she repress and renounce her acerbic, sharp-beaked daemon - or learn to love herself, bird and all? Translated from the Latvian by Zanete Vevere Pasqualini
Download or read book In the Shadow of Death written by Rūdolfs Blaumanis and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rūdolfs Blaumanis's 1899 short story masterpiece, based on a contemporary newspaper account, tells of several fishermen lost at sea after the ice floe on which they work calves off and drifts away rapidly. One by one, the thirteen men and a boy must deal with the creeping reality that they may not see the mainland -- or their loved ones -- again. There is fish to eat, and two horses if necessary, but the very surface of the floe is eroding steadily ... and the nights are cold and terrible. Without ever moralising or over-elaborating, Blaumanis coolly and efficiently observes the state of each of the main characters in turn, whether natural leaders, optimists, craven opportunists, terrified, stoic, compassionate or alienated. In the shadow of encroaching death, each must come to some kind of reckoning.
Download or read book DOOM 94 written by Jānis Joņevs and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doom 94 is Jonevs' debut novel, published first as Jelgava 94 in Latvia in 2013 and was quickly proved to be a big hit and bestseller. Translated into 11 languages already, it is here for the first time in English. The story is set in the 1990s in the Latvian city of Jelgava and looks at the burgeoning craze during this decade for the alternative culture of heavy metal music. Jonevs takes the reader deep inside the world of music, combining the intimate diary of a youngster trying to find himself by joining a subculture, as well as a skilful, detailed, and almost documentary-like depiction of the beginnings of the second independence of Latvia-where Jonevs is the first writer to stir up memories of this period through a fully-fledged literary depiction. Doom 94 is a portrait of a generation searching for their identity and up against the world, trying not to become 'one of them'. But is it for real? Can any adult keep the promise made as a child?
Download or read book Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust written by Edward Anders and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward Anders, son of Adolf Alperovitch (1897-1941) and Erika Sheftelovitch-Meiran (1895-1992), was born in 1926 in Libau, Latvia. He immigrated to the United States in 1949. He married Joan Fleming in 1955. They had two children.
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Cataloging Policy and Support Office and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 1480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Office for Subject Cataloging Policy and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 1360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fiction in French Fiction in Soviet written by British Library and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Latvian Legion written by Arturs Silgailis and published by R.J. Bender Publishing. This book was released on 1986 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
