Distance, Resentment, Grotesque
Memory Culture in Estonian Prose
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)