We had nothing to do with this, which, in a way, makes it even cooler to find it online . . . Apparently this was put together by the fine folks from Books from Lithuania, who have now released

I’m never sure off the effectiveness of these sorts of things, but when I started watching this late Saturday night, I double-checked my door locks when it got to the line: She’s fascinated by the smell of the concentration camp that has permeated his body.

/shiver

Ironically, this Lithuanian novel, which was translated by the award-winning Elizabeth Novickas, was also featured in another video—one that also emphasizes the “Lithanian zombie” aspect, but with a totally different tone:

Anyway, here’s the official announcement from the Lithuanian Translator’s Association:

Elizabeth Novickas has won this year’s St. Jerome Award from the Lithuanian Translator’s Association for her translations of Ričardas Gavelis’s Vilnius Poker and Kazys Boruta’s Whitehorn’s Windmill. Translations into or from Lithuanian literature are evaluated on the basis of their artistic merit and professionalism, as well as the translator’s contributions to intercultural dialog. The aim of the award if to promote the art of translation and raise the prestige of the profession.

If you’re fluent in Lithuanian, you can read more by clicking or

And for those who don’t already know, St. Jerome is the

And for anyone who hasn’t read Vilnius Poker, you really should. As you can see in this video it’s the perfect book for any reader who likes Lithuania and Zombies . . .

by Ricardas Gavelis. Translated from the Lithuanian by Elizabeth Novickas. (Lithuania, Open Letter)

Vilnius Poker may well be one of the darkest and most dense books on the list. (OK, I know that’s not selling language, but I’m banking on the fact that the blurb below will wow everyone.) Using my insider knowledge, I can tell you that after reading the 20-page sample that Elizabeth Novickas sent us, everyone on the Open Letter editorial committee agreed that we had to publish this book. It’s complicated, occasionally humorous, fragmented, told from several conflicting viewpoints, inconclusive, and considered to be “the turning point in Lithuanian literature.” And more relevant to this award, the translation is spot-on.

The novel itself is set during Soviet times and centers around Vytautas Vargalys, a survivor of the labor camps who’s obsessed with Them, a shadowy group that’s taking over, crushing the souls of people, and turning the world to shit. Lolita—a young woman who just started working with Vytautas at an absurd library—is possibly one of Them, or Vytautas’s great love. As his mind continues to fall apart, their relationship takes a decidedly tragic turn . . .

This isn’t an easy book to describe, but I think translator Elizabeth Novickas does a great job in the essay that appeared in CALQUE:

When asked to come up with a summary of what the book is about, or a single section that could characterize it, I find myself groping at so many things that I’m completely at a loss. Yes, I suppose one could summarize something of the plot: there is a murder, a love story, four narrators, a number of characters, a more or less concrete time frame, and most certainly a concrete place, but how to include that time also goes around in circles, and on two occasions actually stops? And what to do with details of the plot that get told over and over, so that in the end you hardly know which version to believe, much less how to describe it? The best I can come up with, without writing a doctoral thesis on the subject, is also the simplest: this is a piece of fiction about life. The four narrators are all flawed people, but they are all people nevertheless, including the last narrator—the reincarnation of one of the characters as a dog. They make us squirm at their rawness, cringe at the depth of their self-deceptions, laugh at their stories, and in the end, when we see what cards they have been dealt, break our hearts.

Gavelis passed away in 2002, but not before writing a series of interesting books with great titles, such as The Life of Sun-Tzu in the Sacred City of Vilnius, The Last Generation of People on Earth, and Seven Ways to Commit Suicide.

Getting back to Vilnius Poker . . . most reviewers tend to focus on the section fo the book that Vytautas Vargalys narrates. And for good reason: it’s a brilliant, haunting, claustrophobic descent into madness that takes up half of the book. If you want to read a sample, But to shake things up a bit, here’s a quote from the second section, narrated by Martynas Poska, a librarian and academic whose “log” is a bit more upbeat that V.V.‘s ravings, and puts what V.V. conveyed into a new light:

Half the world knows what a homo sovieticus is (excepting homo sovieticus himself). However, no one has studied homo lithuanicus, or even homo Vilnensis. These species matter as much to the future of mankind as to its history.

Mankind should be grateful to the Lithuanians that they exist. But it will never forgive them if they do not describe their experience of existence, if they don’t introduce the entire world to it.

Only a Lithuanian is qualified to write the opus “What is the Ass of the Universe.”

The history of the great nations has been explored backwards and forwards. It’s impossible to learn anything more from them. It’s paradoxical, but humanity knows much more about various archaic tribes than it does about the history of European minorities—that quintessence of injustice, absurdity, and errors. The world may be doomed for the simple reason that no one noticed our plight in time. An ethnologist who diligently researched some Albanians or another would be much more useful than one who had written up hundreds of obscure African tribes.

Never forget that we are all, in a certain sense, a bit Albanian. All of us are just a tad Lithuanian. And worst of all—every one of us, in the depths of our hearts, is a Vytautas Vargalys.

Elizabeth Novickas—who has a great introduction to the novel that will appear in the next issue of CALQUE—was interviewed for this piece, the occasion of which is our publication of Vinius Poker, the first of Gavelis’s books to appear in English translation. (And one of only a handful of Lithuanian novels to come out in translation over the past few years.)

Gavelis was a bit of a controversial figure in Lithuania, both for his depictions of Vilnius and the racy content of his books. (And yes, there are some steamy scenes in Vilnius Poker in case you’re into that sort of thing.) Everyone seems to agree that V.P. is his masterpiece, a book that is considered to be “the turning point in Lithuanian literature.”

Although it was supposed to end this past Saturday, we’ll keep our up for a few more days. So instead of paying the $17.95 retail price (and yes, that is for a hardcover) you can buy it directly through our website for only $12.95.

After reading a 20-page sample of Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis, everyone on our editorial committee agreed that we had to publish this book. It’s complicated, dark, occasionally humorous, fragmented, told from several conflicting viewpoints, inconclusive, and considered to be “the turning point in Lithuanian literature.”

It’s set during Soviet times and centers around Vytautas Vargalys, a survivor of the labor camps who’s obsessed with Them, a shadowy group that’s taking over, crushing the souls of people, and turning the world to shit. Lolita—a young woman who just started working with Vytautas at an absurd library—is possibly one of Them, or Vytautas’s great love. As his mind continues to fall apart, their relationship takes a decidedly tragic turn . . .

This isn’t an easy book to describe, but I think translator Elizabeth Novickas does a great job in her essay that appears in the forthcoming issue of

When asked to come up with a summary of what the book is about, or a single section that could characterize it, I find myself groping at so many things that I’m completely at a loss. Yes, I suppose one could summarize something of the plot: there is a murder, a love story, four narrators, a number of characters, a more or less concrete time frame, and most certainly a concrete place, but how to include that time also goes around in circles, and on two occasions actually stops? And what to do with details of the plot that get told over and over, so that in the end you hardly know which version to believe, much less how to describe it? The best I can come up with, without writing a doctoral thesis on the subject, is also the simplest: this is a piece of fiction about life. The four narrators are all flawed people, but they are all people nevertheless, including the last narrator—the reincarnation of one of the characters as a dog. They make us squirm at their rawness, cringe at the depth of their self-deceptions, laugh at their stories, and in the end, when we see what cards they have been dealt, break our hearts.

The book has already received some great reviews, including one in The Believer by Sacha Arnold, one by Eve Ottenberg in the that draws attention to the idea of the city of Vilnius itself being the novel’s true main character, and a write up in Kirkus that urged the reader to “Think of it as The Matrix behind the Iron Curtain—unsettling and profoundly interesting.”

You can read an excerpt and now that the book is officially available—in its bright and appealing cover—we’re offering it for the special price of $12.95. Or, you can get this and 11 future Open Letter titles for only $120 by