Novel
Monument
Not translated into English
Enn Vetemaa · 1965
Synopsis
Sven Voore comes back from Moscow with a title and ambition. Yet he is given only the plinth: the monument to the fallen soldiers will be the work of another man, Ain Saarema, younger and more gifted than he is. Voore tells the affair himself, and tells it well; he knows the right people, he knows what is expected of a party man, and he sees very quickly what could happen to a rival if one went about it the right way. It remains to be seen how far he will go.
Context
The book appeared in 1965 as the first issue of the year of the Loomingu Raamatukogu series, despite a provisional ban by the censorship, and at once caused a stir: it was one of the first in the country in which the person telling the story is a man one cannot love, and a communist at that. Its author reported that the censor had stamped the authorisation while drunk. It has been translated into twenty-two languages, including French, and forms with two later short novels a kind of trilogy on betrayal.
Who it is for
A short novel in Estonian, fully translated into French and readable online. You should know that the narrator is also the man who must be judged, and that he has a talent for telling his own story.
Prizes and reception
Soviet Union prize for the best novel in a national language, and one of the very first books on the party careerist.