Novel
Mērnieku laiki
Not translated into English
Opening lines
Veco krustmāt, kad tu man dosi arī to manas mātes balto lakātu, kuru man šodien rādīji?
Old godmother, when will you give me my mother's white kerchief too, the one you showed me today?
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from wikisource.org
Synopsis
In the imaginary parishes of Slātava and Čangaliena, in Vidzeme, surveyors come, from 1867 to 1873, to mark out the boundaries of the land that the peasants are buying back from the estates. Bribes and frauds accompany every survey, and families quarrel over the plots: the Oliņi, wealthy farmers, against the Gaitiņi, reduced to service. Kaspars and Liena love each other, but it is the families who decide on marriages.
Context
The two brothers, both schoolteachers, set their book in their native Piebalga, under two invented parish names. The agrarian reform, which began with a law of 13 November 1860, brought in the surveyors from 1863 to separate the manor lands from the plots open to purchase by the farmers. The novel's figures, Švauksts the Germanised Latvian, Prātnieks, Pietuka Krustiņš, Oliniete, Pāvuls and Kencis, gave Latvian common nouns for buffoonery or avarice. The Riga studio brought it to the screen in 1968, and Valdis Bisenieks translated it into German in 2012.
Who it is for
A long satirical novel, of more than five hundred pages in its German translation, to be read for its gallery of characters.
Prizes and reception
The first novel written in Latvian, regarded as the first realist novel of this literature, often reissued and celebrated by a coin of the Bank of Latvia.
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