Novel
Tondiöömaja
Not translated into English
Heino Kiik · 1970
Synopsis
On a collective farm in Estonia, in the days of the first collective farms, country life is dark and poor, and the book also finds matter for laughter in it. The chairwoman, Prõlla, is a former wrestler; around her, peasants pushed by force into the common farm, each with his own ideas, tricks and way of speaking, badly kept fields and roads ploughed up by mistake. From these colourful characters and their earthy language comes a chronicle at once comic and bitter of collectivisation.
Context
The manuscript was awarded a prize in 1967; the party saw in it a mockery of the kolkhoz order, and it took three years of struggle between Stalinists and national communists, then the recommendation of First Secretary Johannes Käbin, for it to appear in 1970, severely cut. The public seized on it, and the author's subsequent manuscripts were refused for about ten years. Kiik said he had given several characters real models, including a woman wrestler from Räpina, and took a collective farm in Harjumaa as the setting. In 2005, a second edition restored the manuscript.
Who it is for
Six hundred pages in Estonian, never translated into French or English. It helps to know that the first print run was cut, and that the 2005 edition gives the text of the manuscript.
Prizes and reception
First prize in the 1967 novel competition, and the legendary book by which its author is first known.