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Wednesday 15 April 2020

When the Doves Disappeared

By Sofi Oksanen
                                     


 translated from the Finnish by Lola M. Rogers

About the author :

SOFI OKSANEN was born in 1977 to an Estonian mother and a Finnish father.
She is author and playwright. Her novel ‘PURGE’, based on her theatre play,
Puhdistus, has received numerous domestic and international awards a.o. the French ‘ Prix Femina étranger’. It has been translated in more than forty languages and sold more than two million copies.
‘When the doves disappeared’ has been published in 2012 and translated in English in 2015. A year later the novel has been adapted for the theatre and shown in Finland.
‘NORMA’, her latest novel has been published in 2017.

Historical note:
Having been part of tsarist Russia for three centuries, Estonia’s independence lasted scarcely two decades after the end of WWI. The tiny Baltic country was soon to be invaded again by Stalin in 1940, and a year later by Hitler.
By the end of WWII the Soviets returned and stayed there until the end of their regime in 1991.

The story recounts how three members of an ordinary Estonian family survived in times of foreign occupation, in the forties and the sixties when the country was invaded in quick succession by the Red Army, in 1940, a year later by the Nazis, and again when the Soviets expelled the Germans in 1944. The book covers the triple invasions, twice in wartime between 1940 and 1944, and in the sixties, when Estonia was a Soviet Socialist Republic, behind the ‘Iron Curtain’.

Oksanen’s is very engaged with a particular period of the recent history of her mother’s country and chose to identify with it in her books. Her fiction is based on extensive research of this period. She collected a lot of material for her study in books and publications but also through spoken records of her mother’s relatives and other Estonians, thanks to her fluent knowledge of the language. (cfr. interviews in The Economist 2015).
In her various interviews and lectures, one can feel her wholehearted loyalty to the country, where her maternal family came from. She is very critical of the ‘colonizing’ role the Russians played in the Baltic region. As a Finnish citizen she is familiar with the history of Russian interferences, more particularly since Finland has also been annexed to the Russian Empire during the XIXth century.
  
As a result of the occupations in Estonia, collaboration was widespread, this is why Oksanen devoted a substantial part of her fiction to those depreciating historical details. 
 Hence, the main character, Edgar, is a collaborator and his actions have been inspired by a true Edgar Meos, who lived in Talinn during the wartime (cfr. Interview 2015). 
Edgar, Roland and Edgar’s wife, Juudith, drive the story forward during the triple episodes of occupation.  All three of them mirror the ambiguity of the circumstances and the dilemmas, the whole country was facing.

As Roland and Edgar are very different, they will move in contrary directions.  Roland will remain determined to fight for a free homeland, while Edgar, a weak and twisted mind, becomes an opportunistic mercenary and traitor, successively Nazi servant and Soviet apparatchik.
Juudith, is the helpless wife of a misogynous Edgar and will get involved in a love affair with the German enemy. Furthermore, doves play a role in this novel, as the German occupiers snatched and ate them, thereby wiping away the peace symbols and hope for independence.
The author used subtle psychological descriptions and lively dialogs to explain what went on in the minds of her protagonists.  What could they do to adjust to adjust to these frightening circumstances? Will their survival instincts take over?

Through their behaviour and their changing identities, we enter inside the Nazi and Soviet regimes and we are pulled so deep inside them that we wait breathlessly for the next revelation!
Furthermore, most chapters manage to reflect the fear which reigns in totalitarian systems.

Oksanen has observed that when survival instincts come in, most peacetime values do not hold anymore and complicity and collaboration replace them.
The generalisation of collaboration with totalitarian regimes, results in treason and denunciation, even among families. Many scenes denote crimes. While one actor accepts to work in a German concentration camp, another one writes fraudulent Soviet propaganda. The hated subject of Soviet propaganda, systematically distorting the facts, is another recurring theme in the scenes of 1965.                                               

Like in a theatre play, all the occupation episodes are described in fifty short chapters with the action packed in different scenes, each time with a change in place, time and narrating voice. As the storyline is not linear, the fifty different scenes rock the reader back and forth through time, with forward-and backward flashes. This dizzy-making structure, makes it rather hard to follow and often requires a second reading, especially in the chapter where the Germans are still occupying Reval, (the old German name for Talinn) in 1942, and the action moves abruptly to Talinn 1965, buried under Soviet occupation.

It is her exquisite style that makes the novel enjoyable to read! 
Oksanen’s lyrical and poetic prose enhances most chapters when she depicts enthralling scenes of  rural life in the countryside where small farming still provided for the daily needs.
The focus is often on women with lots of responsibilities providing food by heavy work when their husbands were being drafted or in hiding. I liked the descriptions of their daily lives in the village.

An important addition to this novel is the murder mystery ‘WHO MURDERED ROSALIE?’ an enigma that runs all along the episodes, woven into most chapters.
Roland’s fiancée, Rosalie, has mysteriously disappeared and Roland is going to track the killer!
This intrigue keeps the story alive and fuels it with suspense, since the truth will only be revealed at the end.
It adds another dimension to the story and introduces other aspects from the sphere of romance, marriage relationships, deception and sexual orientation through gripping descriptions of feelings and sufferings.

In one of her interviews, Sofi Oksanen told the press that very few people would be ready to study the complicated history of the tiniest of Baltic countries unless it would be presented through a novel, in order to capture the interest of the public.

 I am convinced she succeeded to do so in this powerful novel.

‘…a pair of doves took off flying. He turned to look at them… the sky as white as the white of Rosalies’s flesh’.
‘…Rosalie’s neck was slender as an alder twig. Like the twigs she would have used a few months later, tied into a broom to sweep the walls before they were whitewashed…with fingers as thin as cigarette holders, fingers that Roland so loved.’

Irene Van Steenberge

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