Gabija Grušaitė (born 1987) is the most prominent millennial voice in Lithuania. She was raised in Vilnius but left to study in London. Her first novel Neišsipildymas (Unfulfilled, 2010) deals mostly with that experience but already aims to speak for the whole generation of “Soviet-millennials”, the first ones to experience the freedom of Western culture after decades of oppression. She later spent a few years in South-East Asia engaged in various social and arts projects, and that experience seems to have influenced her second novel, Stasys Šaltoka (Mr. Colder, 2017). While some might find the ample use of personal experiences in her novels a bit too obvious, it seems to work out fine for Gabija, who has definitely become one of the coolest icons of the Instagram generation.

       Stasys Šaltoka (Cold East). Vilnius: Lapas, 2017. – 276 p. English translation available

On the morning of his 29th birthday, Stasys Šaltoka wakes up next to a woman whose name he doesn’t know. He feels the need to shake things up, so he travels to South-East Asia. He meets other people like himself, twenty- and thirty-somethings who put a lot of effort into looking good on Instagram, but in reality struggle with basic questions like what the f*** they should do with their life. They don’t find a convincing answer, in spite of various exciting stuff they try. While many critics call the book the manifesto of ‘hipster’, ‘millennial’, ‘Instagram’ nation, in fact the closest comparison might be Generation X by Douglas Copeland – the generation and many of its realities are different, yet the bleak feeling of emptiness is quite the same.

       Grybo sapnas (The Mycelium Dream). Vilnius: Lapas, 2023. – 384 p. English sample translation available

Gabija Grušaitė continues her exploration of contemporary life and the homo postsovieticus, projecting her attention towards a foreseeable, elegantly dystopian future. The story unfolds along two narrative lines set in 2025 and 2051, respectively, both unified by the Mycelium Dream – a Nobel Prize-winning theory by scientist Dustin Carter about humanity’s connection with the Vyrdiceps mycelium. This mycelium is posited as being responsible for human consciousness and mind, influencing everything: reality’s illusions, the filter through which we see the world, self-awareness and self-reflection, our relationship with others and life itself. The characters illustrate this theory as they experience conflicting relationships with themselves and others, tirelessly trying to manoeuvre between desires and imposed obligations, between joy and anxiety, tranquillity and inner instability – because the mycelium both gives and takes away. Combining dystopia (a memorable vision of the future) with a fictional scientific theory, while speaking the language of the mycelium, “Grybo sapnas” (The Mycelium Dream) tells the stories of people navigating the labyrinths of contemporary trends in vogue, attempting to overcome the self-destructive dangers of the everyday and seeking to answer (the novel’s) most important question: why is it so hard to be true to oneself? The different answers from the novel’s varied cast of characters testify to the variety of worlds we carry within us and how similar they ultimately are.

Read English sample translation

Selected translations

Ukrainian: Крижаний схiд… один рiк iз життя Стаciса Шалтоки. Translated by Larisa Poliakova. Dnipro” Gerda, 2022

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