Danutė Kalinauskaitė (born 1959) published her first collection of short stories in 1987 and then fell silent for more than twenty years. However, she came back like a storm. She published two more collections of short fiction in 2008 and 2015, and that made her one of the most popular – and very likely one of the most loved – women writers in Lithuania. And everyone knows that short fiction never sells – but here’s a writer who has never written a novel! There seems to be no particular secret to it. There’s no convoluted drama in her biography. Instead, she’s a master observer. Her stories show great insight into the changes that recent major historic events have brought to individual lives of people and families. They often depict different generations next to each other, like a ready comparison of how the same reality can be perceived in very different ways. Most importantly, she has great compassion for her characters. Maybe that’s the secret?

Skersvėjų namai (The House of Drafts). Vilnius: Tyto alba, 2015. – 173 p.

Kalinauskaitė’s latest collection in many ways continues in similar vein as the previous one. The stories feel firmly set in reality – they are full of recognizable references to places, times, news stories, events in Lithuania and the world. In the same way, they feel “recognizable” on a much smaller scale – in minor lifestyle details and small issues and problems that one can easily see as one’s own. The themes of family and home, time and memory. If anything, the stories focus even more on loneliness, isolation and alienation. The language is moving, but also witty, even if the story itself doesn’t seem to provide much to laugh about.

       Baltieji prieš juoduosius (The White Against the Black). Vilnius: Tyto alba, 2023. – 201 p. English and French sample translations available

This novel is the journey of a daughter and her mother (whose memory is fading) through their family tree and time, prompted by the unexpected news of an inheritance in Luxembourg. The family tree, which is needed for lawyers and for an affidavit, forces the narrator to piece together the historical episodes of her own tribe, spanning from the nineteenth century to the present day, and to bring to life the people she is destined to jostle with in this life. This is the struggle of memory – deliberately concealed, silenced, obliterated and adjusted to historical circumstances – against oblivion. Through one family’s story, the history of the whole of Lithuania shines through, and Kalinauskaitė skilfully transcribes both of them with memorable language, a rich vocabulary and endless cascades of nouns. This is a book of people, things and language, telling the story of life’s most important chess matches, of memory and oblivion, of a human being’s enigmatic inscrutability and legacy: what kind of family histories and legends is it made from?

Read English sample translation

Awards

2023: The White Against the Black awarded the Most Creative Book of the Year Prize (Lithuania)

Selected translations

French: Les blancs contre les noirs. Translated by Miglė Dulskytė. In: Vilnius Review, 2024

Spanish: In: Con una mariposa en los labios: Relatos Lituanos contemporáneos. Translated by Carmen Caro Dugo. Madrid: Báltica editorial, 2023

Georgian: In: ტექსტის ხიბლი. Translated by Nana Devidze. Tbilisi: Saga, 2022

English: Striped: short story. Translated by Jayde Will. In: Vilnius Review, 2016

Contact for rights: auguste@tytoalba.lt

Contact for samples & other inquiries: kotryna.pranckunaite@lithuanianculture.lt