Novel
Kuprelis
Not translated into English
Ignas Šeinius · 1913
Synopsis
The Hunchback: Olesis, whom people call the hunchback, tells his life at the mill where he now lives, while the flour is being ground. Painter, inventor, artist's soul, he was the organist of the parish of Skardžiai and loved Gundė, a girl of the region. In the days when Lithuanian print is banned, the national cause mingles with this love, which the narrator relives and comments on from afar. An artist from Warsaw, Jonas Staševskis, comes to trouble the bond between the two young people.
Context
The book was written by a young man of twenty-four, then a student in Moscow. Its author is regarded as the pioneer of impressionism in Lithuanian prose, and the construction of the novel, in which the narrator returns to the key moments of his life and comments on them, was new in that literature; the colours and moods of nature answer to the characters' feelings. Little read when it appeared, the novel was profoundly reworked by the author for the 1932 edition.
Who it is for
A short novel, read for its states of mind more than for its plot; no French translation has been recorded.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's most significant work, it is now on the syllabus of Lithuanian middle schools.
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