Profile Kristina Sabaliauskaite


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OR LITHUANIANS, THE historical novel has been a great rediscovery of our own history,” says Kris- tina Sabaliauskaitė, Lithuania’s most widely-read


contemporary author ahead of representing her country at 2018’s London Book Fair. Speaking in hushed tones suited to the library of Vilnius Universit, where we conduct our interview, Sabaliauskaitė understands the significance of the historical novel for Lithuania. The London-based writer and art historian has writen a tetralogy exploring almost 150 years of the country’s history, novels which became so popular that in 2015 they saw her named the nation’s Woman of the Year. Yet despite their hit status in Lithuania and neigh- bouring Latvia and Poland, with sales of her books running into hundreds of thousands of copies, her work is no costume drama. Incorporating realities of war and religious strife alongside Baroque splendour, the Silva Rerum series is based on Sabaliauskaitė’s meticu- lous research of the multicultural 16th- to 18th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, all the while follow- ing four generations of one noble family. The family’s story begins in 1659, just aſter the 1655 Deluge Musco- vite and Cossack invasion, when Vilnius was pillaged and burned, and ends in 1795, with the final partition of the empire, when the state ceased to exist and disap- peared from the map. Joining what Sabaliauskaitė calls “the science of history with the art of literature”, she is even able to plausibly weave in a stint in London for her characters. Sabaliauskaitė embarked on the project to address a lack of understanding about the period brought about by years of Russian censorship. “From the 16th to the end of the 18th century, Poland and Lithuania was thought of as one of the greatest European empires, both in size and in geopolitical influence. With the Russian and Soviet occupation, the memory of this great empire was completely censored and erased from the mass memory,” she says.


The secret history


As we discuss Sabaliauskaitė’s desire to show “the colours” of the “flourishing culture” of that period—a state of affairs obscured by censorship—and to help it to reclaim its place in Lithuania’s “mass consciousness”, it becomes clear the country has an interesting literary history. Historically, Lithuanian literature was writen in different languages. In the 17th century, it was writ in French; in the 18th and early 19th century Polish, the language of the upper classes; then,lasses; then, empted to n language


from 1864 to 1904, a press ban atempt “Russify” and erase the Lithuanian language ans were


entirely. During that ban Lithuanians were anguage


engaged in a struggle to keep the language alive; with the participation of everyone from poor peasants to the nobilit, around 3,000


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Lithuanian-language titles were illegally published, and five million copies of them were circulated. Lithuania managed to retain its language, but when it was annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940–41, and occupied again by the Soviets from 1944 (Nazi Germany occupied the territory in the intervening period), restriction and censorship of content compelled writers to toe the Communist line until the country declared independence in 1990. During these Soviet years almost all Western and pre-war literature was locked in so-called “special collections”, unable to be accessed by readers. Among Lithuanian authors, anything that had a trace of “bourgeoise thinking” or Western influence was completely unpublishable, so many writers in effect self-censored. If a manuscript was critical of the Soviet system, its author could expect to be picked up by the KGB for interrogation, marking the end of their career— or worse.


Mightier than the sword Literature, nonetheless, found a way to play a key role in Lithuania’s fight for freedom. “[Censorship] only inspired a number of Lithuanian authors to master the form. They tried to say things that the censors couldn’t quite put their finger on,” says Sabaliauskaitė. Alluding to the final years of its occupation, one such example she cites is Ričardas Gavelis, whose ruthless vivisection of a by-then “senile Soviet system”, the 1989-published Vilnius Poker, simultaneously became “a herald of free- dom” and a runaway bestseller. Aſter years of repression, Lithuanian literature


is enjoying a renaissance, Sabaliauskaitė believes. “Although we have experienced censorship, we have mastered the language and the stlistic expression to perfection. I think it’s the golden age of Lithuanian literature,” she says. And she is not alone in thinking so: publishers across the board at the Vilnius Book Fair said they had recognised a surge in demand for books by local authors. While Sabaliauskaitė’s success is proof of the ground- swell for self–reflection in a new tpe of historical novel among Lithuanians, with the help of the Lithu- anian Culture Institute’s translation grant programme for foreign publishers, hopes are high that Lithuanian literature is primed to become the country’s calling card globally too. “I o


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Kristina at LBF


Kristina Sabaliauskaitė is one of today’s three Baltic Countries Authors of the Day, alongside Estonian writer Mihkel Mutt and Latvian novelist and essayist Nora Ikstena. She will appear at three events at the fair. Today, in Sinking Europe? European Narratives in Times of Change (Cross-Cultural Hub, 11 a.m.), she joins her fellow Lithuanian Tomas Venclova, a poet; Mihkel Mutt; and writer and journalist Sathnam Sanghera, in an event chaired by journalist Peter Pomerantsev, to discuss how contempo- rary writers can engage with an evolving Europe. Writing History as


Fiction: The Baltics and Beyond (Cross- Cultural Hub, today at 4 p.m.) will see her discuss why writers are drawn to the past—and why read- ers follow them there— with novelist Rein Raud. Tomorrow at 10 a.m.


at the Cross-Cultural Hub she joins Inga Ābele, Vahni Capildeo and event chair Steven Fowler to explore Writing the City: Baltic Spaces, British Places.


“I oſten get asked, ‘Why should a British publisher print historical novels about Lithuania?’. I usually retort, ‘For the same reason a Lithuanian reader should read British literature’,” says Sabaliauskaitė. “What readers will make of Lithuanian literature will all depend on their first encounter,” she adds. “If you have one or several books that trigger the imagination, make the impact and are visible, it will open the gates for the rest.”


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