Novel
White Shroud
Balta drobulė
Antanas Škėma · 1958
Synopsis
Antanas Garšva, an exiled Lithuanian poet, is a lift operator in a large New York hotel. Between floors, his mind lets a whole life rise to the surface: childhood in Kaunas, the only son of two teachers whose marriage falls apart, the mother who sinks into dementia, the poor bohemian life of his youth, then the occupations and an interrogation in which he refuses to write the poem he is ordered to produce. He loves Elena, a married woman, and increasingly severe attacks threaten him.
Context
The novel appeared in 1958 in London, in the series of the Nida Book Club, a publishing house of the exile. It is partly autobiographical: like his hero, the author earned his living in exile by operating a lift. Interior monologue, diary and third-person narrative alternate in it, arranged by association of ideas, and most critics of the exile saw in it an experiment that opened a new path for Lithuanian prose. The book did not appear in Lithuania until 1990, was staged in 2012 by Jonas Jurašas, and has been translated into English, then into French.
Who it is for
A short but demanding novel, which jumps without warning from one time and one voice to another. It has existed in French since 2024, published by Cambourakis, in the translation by Miglė Dulskytė.
Prizes and reception
His best-known work, regarded in Lithuania as a cult novel since its publication in the country in 1990.
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