Full Description
Estonians believe their greatest writer to be the prolific novelist and translator A.H. Tammsaare whose most famous work is his famous pentalogy, Truth and Justice, which traces Estonia's dramatic history from the 1860s to the 1930s. Vagabond Voices is publishing the third volume of the pentalogy, After the Storm Fell Silent, following on from Volume I, Vargamae in which deals with the peasantry and at the end introduces the protagonist Indrek, and Volume II whose title is simply Indrek and recounts his education in the city. Both those volumes have already been published by Vagabond Voices, and has sold well in spite of their considerable bulk. In Volume III Indrek finds himself unemployed and alone in a hostile world that is beginning to fall apart. The 1905 Revolution, which would be overshadowed later by the one in 1917, is just starting and the pentalogy is shifting from the personal and the familial to the public and societal. Ideas are driving events, and the consequences are tragic. Tammsaare entirely ignores 1917 in this pentalogy possibly because Volume III has already dealt with this subject. This volume is very much shorter than the others, and only about 70,000 words, but it is the dense and significant core of the pentalogy. It can stand on its own, but is also an integral part of the whole.
