Andrus Kivirähk (born 1970) is a most remarkably prolific, innovative and powerful figure on the Estonian literary scene of today. He is a virtuoso who can easily shift from one style to another, producing short stories, newspaper columns, pamphlets and dramatic texts, writing for children and for TV. However, Kivirähk is most appreciated for his novels - first and foremost for The Old Barny (Rehepapp, 2000), a literary fantasy based on folklore. The story borrows enormously from the old oral tradition, using legends concerning werewolves, treasure-collecting beings called kratt, spirits of the forefathers and wild ghosts of the forest, the Plague coming to the village in a guise of a young girl, etc. The Old Barny is a trickster-like hero embodying wisdom, magical powers and cunning; in the novel he represents the practical mind, sometimes apparently cynical and rude, but offering necessary points of reference to get by in different worlds.

Kivirähk has a continuing interest in history as a fiction, as a myth underlying and constructing popular consciousness. He has little interest in historical facts, but has a knack for penetrating the most hidden layers of local mentality. His first novel The Memoirs of Ivan Orav (Ivan Orava mälestused, 1995 and 2003) is an extensive parody of the rewriting of history after the disappearance of Soviet occupation. Ivan Orav is a miraculous being who claims to have survived all the heroic epochs, crucial periods and turning points. Not a single cliché or popular stereotype remains untouched; the narrator’s voice is constantly oscillating between ingenuity and imbecility. Kivirähk’s second novel Butterfly (Liblikas, 1999) is more sophisticated, tracing back the history of Estonian theatre. This time the voice is a “ghostly voice”, belonging to a dead actor who writes his memoirs in the grave; however, the book has no sinister aspect, centering on the biography of his wife Erika Tetzky and retelling countless jokes about the actors.

Kivirähk’s short stories fall under the classical category of humeur noire. In this genre he has few equals in Estonian literature. The best collection until today is Baker’s Gingerbread (Pagari piparkook, 1999), including masterpieces like “The Poor Man”, “Jacob the Artist” and “The Case of the Burning Eyes” - the latter a detective story leading to the discovery that the murder was committed by the reader himself or herself. The apogee of the genre seems to be the dark comedy Romeo and Juliet (Romeo ja Julia, 2003), an excellent mixture of a pastoral idyll and regional realism, ending with a terrifying parody of the mystical union of the alchemists (to put it briefly, two lovers will be cooked and served as a jelly, wherein their flesh and limbs have become inseparable).

Text by Hasso Krull