IN DEPTH


Author Interview Janis Jonevs


Janis Jonevs on his Europe-wide heavy metal hit, and how ‘post-Soviet’ Latvian literature is flying


Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan 16 20th October 2023


I


meet Jānis Joņevs on a sunny Riga day and we are there, as you might imagine, to talk about the Latvian author’s books—beginning with his semi-


autobiographical young metalhead’s coming-of-age début novel, Jelgava ’94 (translated into English as Doom ’94), which won the 2014 EU Prize for Literature; through to his latest novel, 2022’s Decembris (December), a detective story concerning a series of real-life murders in Riga in the late 1990s; and to his most recent project, Pazudis (Disappeared), a mash-up of photography and stories revolving around advertisements of lost pets Joņevs has found posted on lamp posts over the years. But, almost inevitably, we start to talk about Russia. The impetus is the most recent outrage from the Ukraine war, which has Joņevs contemplating the complicated legacy his country has with the great bear on its border. He says: “It is declining, but there are still 30%–40% Russian speakers [as their first language] in Latvia.


Photography: Didzis Grodzs


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