Memoirs of a Life Cut Short

"We’ve considered a number of young voices. Gavelis you could almost describe as more established in the sense that out of all the writers I mentioned (or am planning on mentioning) he had the longest writing career. It started during the Soviet period. He was a dissident in the Soviet regime, but he was very much at the forefront of the independence movement. He was one of the harshest, most outspoken critics in Lithuanian literature of the prior regime. You could describe him as a chronicler of Vilnius and the early independent republic. He talks about the emergence of new structures of power, of authority. In the work that I chose, Memoirs of a Life Cut Short , he’s talking about self-awareness. Self-awareness of an individual, of a nation, what it means to be Lithuanian, what it means for a country to be sovereign. First and foremost, it talks about Lithuanians. For me, this is still the most important post-1989 Lithuanian novel that has been published. It really explains this person who grew up purely in the Soviet era, why they became what they became, and the inner workings of their minds. “For me, this is still the most important post-1989 Lithuanian novel that has been published” When I was living in Lithuania, I often had the impression that people really didn’t want to talk about the past, at least the most recent past. I came up with various theories as to why, and when I read this book it all made so much sense. So much fell into place for me about Lithuanian mentality. Gavelis was a merciless critic of Lithuanian society. For him to channel his critique through these letters as if talking with people like Camus and Stalin is an ingenious way of talking about Lithuania in juxtaposition with other points of view, by and large European, which inform or influence Lithuanian culture."