Books from Estonia
20 popular estonian books
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world.
All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around Europe Challenge" were written by authors from Estonia.
Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.
11.
The Conspiracy & Other Stories by Jaan Kross, Eric Dickens EN
Description:
A collection of stories by an Estonian on the daily dilemmas of living in a society ruled by a dictatorship. Thus, trying to stay out of politics is often a disguised form of collaboration and personal survival may require sacrificing a friend. The author spent five years in a Soviet gulag.
12.
The Cut Line by Carolina Pihelgas EN
Description:
In the dog days of an Estonian summer, Liine flees to the countryside to put a conclusive end to her toxic 14-year relationship. She undergoes every stage of separation in a lone farmstead amid forests. A lot of physical labor and gardening help her withstand her ex-partner's threats, the incredulity of friends and family, and her own anguish. Dread is pervasive in this novel. Set in the near future, it is filled with vivid depictions of the threat of climate change. All around Liine, nature is facing acute drought and heat. No less menacing is the presence of an expanding NATO base close to t... continue
13.
The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Andrus Kivirähk EN
Description:
Unfortunately people and tribes degenerate. They lose their teeth, forget their language, until finally they're bending meekly on the fields and cutting straw with a scythe. Leemut, a young boy growing up in the forest, is content living with his hunter-gatherer family. But when incomprehensible outsiders arrive aboard ships and settle nearby, with an intriguing new religion, the forest begins to empty - people are moving to the village and breaking their backs tilling fields to make bread. Meanwhile, Leemut and the last forest-dwelling humans refuse to adapt: with bare-bottomed primates and t... continue
14.
The Poet and the Idiot and Other Stories by Friedebert Tuglas EN
Description:
Estonian literature in its written form is little more than a century old. As Estonia was part of the Russian Empire, then of the Soviet Union, it is something of a miracle that the powerful presence of the Baltic Germans, the periods of Russification, and other more subtle forms of cultural pressure, have not eradicated Estonian as a serious literary language. One of the central figures to credit for this was Friedebert Tuglas. The nine stories, and the essay, featured here were written during the World War One, or in the first years of Estonian independence in the early 1920s. They reflect t... continue
15.
The Reconstruction by Rein Raud EN
Description:
For five years, Enn Padrik has postponed the investigation into the apparently religiously inspired suicide of his daughter and her friends at a commune near Viljandi, but now he cannot do it any longer. He has to travel all over Estonia and even to France to talk to those who might remember anything relevant. Some of these people seem to have been waiting for him, others refuse to talk. And little by little, a bigger and quite unexpected picture starts to emerge. From the late 1970s through 2011, the book spans the lives of two generations, the changes in the world at large and the Estonian s... continue
16.
The Ropewalker : Between Three Plagues Volume I by Jaan Kross EN
Description:
The first part in an epic historical trilogy - The Estonian answer to Wolf Hall - by the nation's greatest modern writer Jaan Kross's trilogy dramatises the life of the renowned Livonian Chronicler Balthasar Russow, whose greatest work described the effects of the Livonian War on the peasantry of what is now Estonia. Like Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell, Russow is a diamond in the rough, a thoroughly modern man in an Early Modern world, rising from humble origins to greatness through wit and learning alone. As Livonia is used as a political football by the warring powers of Russia, Sweden, Pol... continue
17.
The Willow King by Meelis Friedenthal EN
Description:
A deeply engrossing, philosophical novel by a rising Estonian literary star. Wrapped into his long coat against the incessant rain and accompanied by a strange parrot, the young Dutch student Laurentius arrives in Estonia on an icy day at the end of the seventeenth century. On the run from a dark past and suspected of heresy, he has fled to Tartu, 'The City of the Muses', to study at the famous university. Laurentius has been searching obsessively for a cure for the mysterious melancholy which torments him, and is desperate to understand where the soul comes from, and how it relates to the bod... continue
18.
Description:
Treading Air follows the life of Ullo Paerand through 30 years of violent political upheaval. Abandoned by his father as a child, he grows up to become an electoral assistant to the parliamentary office in Tallinn and it is in this position that Ullo witnesses first the Soviet and then the German occupation of Estonia. Forced out of his honest profession Ullo becomes involved with the Resistance but, when many Estonians flee the country, he chooses to remain. An interlude of a decade shows much has changed since the end of the War; Soviet influence is marked in the style of government and the ... continue
19.
Vuelo estático by Jaan Kross ES
Description:
Vuelo estático es, o debiera ser un libro de lectura para todos los estonios (si creyera en el valor de la obligatoriedad de la lectura de literatura).
La estructura es, a primera vista, sencillo: Sirkel, alter ego de Jaan Kross, nos cuenta la vida de Ullo Paerand. Muchas veces narrando las cosas que ha escuchado; otras dandole voz a Ullo en unas entrevistas pautadas para esta biografía.
En el trasfondo, la historia de Estonia, desde su declaración de la Independencia en 1918 hasta la década del '80, cuando se desarrollan las entrevistas; aunque con una mirad... continue
20.
Walker on Water by Kristiina Ehin EN
Description:
A woman cultivates a knack for walking on water, but is undermined by her husband's brain, which he removes each night when he returns home from work; a couple overcomes the irksome mischief of the gods; a skeptical dragon wonders what sex is all about: this is the world of Kristiina Ehin. From the 2007 British Poetry Society Popescu prize winner for European poetry in translation: a series of comic, surreal adventures. Kristiina Ehin's quirky voice takes each story directly from the dream state, at times stubborn and resistant, at other times masochistically compliant. Ehin offers up modern f... continue