Photo by Monika Penkutė

Jurga Tumasonytė (born 1988) published her first collection of short stories in 2011 to some acclaim (she won a debuting writers’ award) and then told everyone that she was writing a novel. Which was not happening. She began something and could not finish nor control it. She was embarrassed when anyone asked her how the novel is going. She felt like a failure. And then another writer told her to just write really good short stories, and then no one will remember the failed novel. As she was expecting her firstborn, she decided to put the stories she had to a collection and show it to publishers, because she thought that having a baby will mean a forced break from writing. The book, titled Undinės, was published in 2019 and became an immediate success, shortlisted for both the Book of the Year and the Most Creative Book of the Year. The seven stories were especially praised for the seamless blends of realism and surrealism or magical elements. And once the baby was born, so was the novel. 

       Remontas (The Renovation). Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishing House, 2020. – 240 p. English, Croatian, Catalan sample translations available

This debut novel falls squarely within the trend of reminiscing about the 90s in Lithuania in recent literature, but it also stands out within the trend in that it is not an (auto)biography or a Bildungsroman. Instead, it is a psychological thriller, written with a real skill of structuring plot twists and revelations at the perfect pace to keep the reader interested. The story begins when the nameless narrator finds out that her neighbor is missing. At first her husband tells her to chill and stop getting so involved in what, according to him, is not much of her business. But gradually, it turns out that the missing woman is one of the most important people in the narrator’s life: they were even born on the same day. The crazy old lady from their building whom everyone calls the Witch prophesied a brighter future for the narrator than for her friend. In order to figure out what happened to the missing woman, one has to follow the narrator through the whole of their life story. 

       Naujagimiai (The Newborns). Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishing House, 2023. – 248 p. English sample translation available

Beginning in a mythological and magical primordial world, Tumasonytė’s The Newborns is a novel made up of 19 novellas that tell the story of life-creating chains of beginnings and endings, causes and effects. The stories begin with Anicetas Dulkys, who falls off the roof before his wedding and visits the afterlife. Later, the witch of feminine spells, a kind of 20th century fairy, Elžbieta, appears with her daughter Paulina, and thus a circle of stories, not lacking in elements of magical realism and folklore, begins to unfold, forming a coherent story of a single family and a single town, winding its way through the entire twentieth century and into the near future. Drawing on the genres of fairy tales and family legends, combining shadows of the past, nightmares and beautiful dreams, Tumasonytė narrates situations, creating each novella as if it were a moving snapshot of individual fates and different epochs (the interwar period, the war, Soviet occupation, and independence).

Read English sample translation

Selected translations

French: Les nouveau-nés. Translated by Caroline Paliulis. In: Vilnius Review, 2024

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

Contact for inquiries: kotryna.pranckunaite@lithuanianculture.lt