Estonia's bestknown and most translated writer is Jaan Kross (1920-2007). He has been tipped for the Nobel Prize for Literature on several occasions for his novels, but did in fact start his literary career as a poet and translator of poetry. On his return from the labour camps and internal exile in Russia where he spent the years 1946-1954 as a political prisoner, Kross renewed Estonian poetry, giving it new directions. Kross began writing prose in the latter half of the 1960s, first with a film scenario "A Livonian Chronicle" (Liivimaa kroonika) which dealt with the life of the author Balthasar Russow (1536-1600) and which also became the subject of his first masterpiece "Between Three Plagues" (Kolme katku vahel, 1970), a suit of four novels. From that time onwards Kross moved by stage nearer to our present time in history, describing figures from Estonian history, first in short stories and novellæ, later in novels, also in writings where he has drawn upon his own experiences. The heroes of his novels tend to be of Estonian or Baltic German origin and cultured people, though on the margins of society and are usually faced with a moral dilemma of some sort.

Kross himself has termed his own books psychological character novels, which is by no means to underrate the time and space which surrounds these figures: Kross attempts to be as accurate as possible with regard to historical detail, whether the work is set in the 16th or 20th century. When writing about history, Kross always manages to make hints and allusions to his own era. Russow's Livonian chronicle plays around with the idea of censorship, while the Czar's madman, Timotheus von Bock is declared mad for criticising the Czarist régime, a fate which also befell dissidents in Soviet times. The professor of law, Martens, serves an empire which blithely ignores human rights, whilst the excavations in the novel of that name reveal a 13th century manuscript which threatens the totalitarian nature of the Soviet régime by their contents. In his most recent autobiographical novels, set against the background of personal experiences, Kross describes the loss of Estonian sovereignty in the late 1930s and early 1940s ("Treading Air" (Paigallend)) where he describes the fate of one a number of schoolmates as the Estonian Republic disintegrates and the Second World War ensues. Perspectives on the past are so important for Kross, that in his most recent novel "Tahtamaa Farm", the problems arise of the restitution of state property to its former owners during renewed independence in the 1990s. Criticism of society can be seen in a historical perspective, although this time Kross is writing about the present day for contemporary readers. Against the background of his own work, Kross has held a series of lectures at the University of Tartu, which are collected in the volume "Autobiographism and subtext" (Omaeluloolisus ja alltekst, 2003).

Jaan Kross' twelve full-length novels, his short stories and novellæ cover a cross-section of Estonian history in a European context. In the confident composition of his works, Kross has varied both form and narration, so that his works fit into the canons of classicism, modernism or even postmodernism. This is literature, which is psychologically enriching and emotionally satisfying, whose influence is acknowledged by readers in many countries.

Text by Janika Kronberg