Cover Osteuropa 6/2008

In Osteuropa 6/2008

Distance, Resentment, Grotesque
Memory Culture in Estonian Prose

Cornelius Hasselblatt


Deutsche Fassung

Abstract

Four Estonian authors from the postwar era have found their own styles to process the traumatic years from 1944 to 1953/1956 in literature. Jaan Kross approaches what was experienced from a considerable distance and with humour, whereas the cumbersome, inaccessible collages of text by Ene Mihkelson show resentment. In Viivi Luik’s childlike-naive report, the terror is revealed only indirectly. Andrus Kivirähk’s approach to the past passes through satire.

(Osteuropa 6/2008, pp. 417–455)