Novel
Tuli ja raud
Not translated into English
Karl Ristikivi · 1938
Synopsis
In the 1880s, Jüri Säävel, a farmhand, dreams of land of his own; but married and a father, he keeps changing places without putting anything aside, and ends up going to Tallinn with his wife and child, for a time, long enough to save up the price of a farm. He takes a job at the foundry. The temporary becomes an entire life, among the workers, the changing lodgings and the crowded neighbours, through 1905, the war and the birth of the republic, with work, honesty and love of one's neighbour as his only principles.
Context
Written very quickly, the novel won first prize in the novel competition of the publisher Loodus, which published it in 1938; the critics praised the unexpected wisdom of so young an author, who was presented as the heir of Tammsaare, and he joined the writers' union. It is the first part of a Tallinn trilogy, continued in 1940 and 1942, which each time follows a different class of recent city dwellers: the worker here, then the merchant and the schoolteacher. It is counted among the great working-class novels of Estonian literature.
Who it is for
Nearly five hundred pages in Estonian, never translated into French or English. It helps to know that the book follows half a century of a man's life, from the 1880s to the republic.
Prizes and reception
The book that brought its author, at the age of twenty-six, to the front rank of Estonian letters.