BONJOUR L'ESTONIE

Purge - Sofi Oksanen

The story of Estonia's long occupation underpins a sprawling tale of sex trafficking, abuse and betrayal.

The title of this bestseller from Sofi Oksanen alludes to the mass deportation to Stalin's gulags of those Estonians deemed to have collaborated during the 1941-44 German occupation. The purge is pivotal for the family at the centre of her story, but Oksanen also moves beyond the bitter dilemmas of collusion and resistance to deal with the more private horror of sexual violence during both peace and war.

The story spans 60 years, opening in 1992 after Estonia has regained its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Aliide Truu, an elderly widow, lives by canning fruit on the outskirts of a forest in western Estonia. She pursues a land restitution case and is tormented by stone-throwers who revile her communist history. Her daughter has moved to Helsinki because "Estonia was full of people who kept saying that they should have left for Finland or Sweden during the war", a regret "passed on to the next generation with their lullabies". The buried past resurfaces when Aliide takes in Zara, a bruised and dishevelled "dishrag of a girl" from Vladivostok who has turned up in her yard.

As the two women circle one another, each suspicious by reflex, the novel moves back and forth in time. We learn that Zara, granddaughter of an Estonian woman exiled to Siberia during the purge, is on the run from Russian pimps after being trafficked via Berlin as a sex worker. Her gangster pursuers are closing in but, for the widow, "they might as well all come – Mafia thugs, soldiers – Reds and Whites – Russians, Germans, Estonians . . . Aliide would survive. She always had."

The Ghastly Year

The republishing of «The Ghastly Year» is not only praiseworthy and to be congratulated but also necessary. «The Ghastly year» in the life of the Latvian people refers to events which can not be kept hidden. «The Ghastly year» is the first and, at the given moment, the only documentation of events of 1940, precise evidence from that time without any connections to be made with present events within Latvia.

This book can not be accepted as an invitation to a specific action or as blame upon some nationality. It is evidence left by history on events in 1940 within Latvia so few of which are documented or depicted. It was a period of time filled with tragedy, and the misrepresentation of actual historical events in order to serve present needs is unacceptable.

This historical, unedited republication of the «The Ghastly Year» , unexpurgated for the current political state of affairs, has the blessing of God, and there are no grounds to consider this to be anti-Semitic literature.

Check it all here

Bradt's Estonia

This week's essential reading is a guidebook: Estonia by Neil Taylor, published by Bradt. I would not normally make a guidebook pick of the week on this blog, but Neil Taylor's book is different. For a start, Bradt is the only major publisher to treat the Baltic states separately and give them each their own book. The lazy conflation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into a single region is a tiresome hangover from the days when they were called the "Soviet Baltic Republics".

The book covers almost every visitable corner of Estonia, from the grim ruins of the old Soviet airbase at Paide near Tapa to the Hanseatic delights of the Tallinn old town. The author's affection for his subject shines through—but is never sickly. If a drive is dull or a museum tasteless, he says so.

It would be nice if more guidebooks showed that kind of honesty. And it would be nice if those responsible for Estonia's tourist industry would read the book and perhaps take Mr Taylor's gentle but well-directed advice: for example in ensuring that the staff at the long-distance bus station ticket office all speak enough English to sell tickets.

The Eesti experience

TALLINN — Traditionally, Estonians like to have sex on a Saturday after their weekly bath in their sauna. In fact, the sauna is one of the most important buildings on any property in the country.

This is one interesting things I learned from the new book “My Estonia” by Justin Petrone. It is one of the funniest, frank and most accurate accounts of real life in the Baltics that I have read.

Like one of Bill Bryson’s better books, Petrone’s yarn lays out life in Estonia as an expat actually experiences it. No sugar-coating of the northernmost, frigid country in the region, just reality, as an expat like myself that has lived in the Baltics for years can attest.

The book retells the story of Petrone’s romantic rollercoaster ride in his first year in Estonia back in 2003, before Estonia joined the European Union. Petrone arrives in Estonia in the middle of winter, a harrowing time when one doesn’t see the sun for most of the day and when any rock could be a slippery piece of ice.

Stories about bizarre characters, strange food and other escapades make up the book in hilarious chapters, most of which each could be read individually as well. It’s a book you can start and stop easily, without losing your rhythm.