Novel
Bees on the Snow
Kalės vaikai
Saulius Šaltenis · 1990
Synopsis
In an eighteenth-century Lithuanian village, under German and Russian rule, a family is driven out of its house and tavern in favour of German settlers. On a freezing Christmas night, Pastor Kristijonas, whom his mother had saved from the plague by bargaining with Death, disappears, and he is found nearly frozen in his own manger, among the animals. Around him live Karvelis, a herdsman turned bell ringer, Lotė the Betrothed and her fatherless son, and a schoolmaster who makes the coffins.
Context
Published by Vaga in 1990, the novel was written in the last Soviet years, and the German threat it stages echoes the occupation. It is made of linked stories, some told in several versions, and of a crowd of characters; the Germans, the bishop and his retinue, a petty squire and his overly large wife are mocked. Eimuntas Nekrošius brought it to the stage in 2017 from a text by the author. It appeared in English in 2021 as Bees on the Snow, translated by Elizabeth Novickas; it does not exist in French.
Who it is for
For a teeming, playful novel, at once a picture of peasant life of old and an allegory of occupation.
Prizes and reception
Welcomed in 2021, on its publication in English, as a dense and surprising tale that tenderly portrays rural life of the past.