Rasa Aškinytė (born 1973) has a background in history and philosophy. Her main work is at a university, where she teaches philosophy, ethics and didactics and where she also writes and co-writes textbooks and other materials for schools and universities. She is the author of four novels and one children’s story. She has famously shrugged off repeated comments about her “unfeminine” style of writing with a request to say exactly what constitutes feminine writing so that she could change. Feminine or not, the voice of her fiction is definitely distinctive: emphatically crisp and short, often even slightly academic. Most of her novels (with the notable exception of her most recent, Glessum) are set in nameless ‘anywheres’, with no particular relationship to a place, time and culture, focusing instead on universal aspects of human existence. In the later ones she has put on her historian hat: Glessum deals with a 2nd century CE Baltic tribe, and the latest Istorija kaip upė connects particular events from Lithuanian history.

       Glesum (Glesum). Vilnius: Vaga, 2016. – 169 p. English, Korean sample translations available

The main character’s extraordinary amber-like features – brown eyes and brown hair – inspire the man who falls in love with her, to give her the name Glesum. This novel gives us a glimpse into the second and third centuries AD and the everyday lives of the Aesti tribes who were inseparably linked to the Roman Empire through the Baltic Amber Road.
The plot tension is created by two women – Selija, the wife of Gondas, the leader of the tribe, and Glesum, whom Gondas falls in love with and kidnaps from Akvilėja. The story of secret relationship, competition and motherhood develops against the fascinating backdrop of their everyday life in the tribe, their social and cultural reality, and their ritualistic relationship with the natural world and its deities.

       Istorija kaip upė (History as a River). Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishing House, 2018. – 168 p. 

The title serves as the main organizing metaphor: a river connects several women living in different times and cultures, seemingly bringing them always the same, something recurrent. Each in her own life and circumstances, the women repeatedly encounter and confront the same major questions about gods and religions, about love and relationships. It is also a book about welcoming or banishing the other, the stranger, the one who does not fit in and conform. And most importantly, about being a woman. The book is easy to read and rather short, but it is quite difficult emotionally. The lives of the women, are full of not just love and motherhood, but also suffering, and sometimes suffering because of love and motherhood. A mystical, hazy idea of sisterhood seems to underlie the whole story and its structure. But quite likely the sisterhood itself is what makes the reader experience the pain of others. 

Selected translations

German: Kleines Bernstein. Translated by Markus Roduner. Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2021

Latvian: Glesum. Translated by Dace Meiere. Riga: Janis Roze Publishers, 2021

Contact for inquiries: kotryna.pranckunaite@lithuanianculture.lt