Novel
Tūla
Jurgis Kunčinas · 1993
Synopsis
In the last years of the Soviet Union, an unnamed narrator, a vagabond intellectual who refuses a settled life, wanders the old streets of Vilnius and above all Užupis, a run-down artists' district cut off from the Old Town by the Vilnia. He drinks, wastes time, works for a while on an assembly line, is confined for alcoholism and flies off in dreams like a bat, all the while remembering a week spent with Tūla, whom he loved without hope and who does not say a word in the whole book.
Context
Published in 1993 by the Lithuanian Writers' Union press, the novel received that Union's prize in 1994 and has been reissued several times. At once a love story, a tribute to the city and a look at the end of the Soviet era, it is chatty, digressive, ironic and lyrical in places, which has led to comparisons with Bukowski and the Beat Generation writers. The author is regarded as the chronicler of Vilnius bohemia, its artists and outsiders. Translated into Polish, Swedish, Russian, German, Czech and Croatian, it appeared in English in 2016, translated by Elizabeth Novickas; it does not exist in French.
Who it is for
For strolling through a poor and bohemian Vilnius with a drunk, funny and erudite narrator who finds beauty in everyday life.
Prizes and reception
Honoured by his peers the year after its publication, it ranks third in the list of Lithuanian books drawn up in 2018.