Antanas Šileika
Photo by Irmantas Gelūnas
Antanas Šileika is a Canadian writer of Lithuanian descent who writes in English. He has published seven books of fiction and a memoir in Canada, with six of his books being translated into Lithuanian. He was the director of the Humber School for Writers in Toronto before retiring to devote himself to writing. His novel “Underground” was included in The Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books of 2011. His memoir “The Barefoot Bingo Caller” won the Book of the Year award in Lithuania in 2018. In 2023, his novel “Provisionally Yours” (“Laikinai jūsų”, 2019) was adapted for film.
Laikinai jūsų (Provisionally Yours). Windsor: Biblioasis, 2019, – 284 p. Translated from English by Kristina Aurylaitė. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2019. – 294 p.
Canadian-Lithuanian author Antanas Šileika’s spy novel “Provisionally Yours” was added to the best international crime fiction list on CrimeReads.com in July 2019. Justas Adamonis returns to Lithuania after long service in the Russian army, hoping finally to stay with his family he hasn’t seen for years, and to make a fresh start in life. Unfortunately for him, the head of the Lithuanian army intelligence services Mykolas Landa instead sends Adamonis to complete the very first counter-intelligence mission. Slowly and cinematically developed, the events of the novel draw Adamonis and the reader into the interwar atmosphere, where the Russian intelligence agents’ trajectories map the streets of the swiftly modernizing temporary capital Kaunas, only to meet in a charming love triangle.
Nebaigti reikalai (Some Unfinished Business). Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2023. – 302 p. Translated from English by Kristina Aurylaitė. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2024. – 320 p.
The latest novel by Antanas Šileika is a story about settling the scores of World War II and historical events, in all their painful circumstances. It is about the unfinished business between Martin Averka and his teacher Kostas. In 1957, having spent ten years in the Gulag, Martin returns to Soviet-occupied Lithuania and tries to rebuild his life. However, he cannot find peace due to his urge to take revenge on his former teacher Kostas, who, in 1947, came to Martins’s native village of Lyn Lake and inspired him to dream of a future beyond the village’s confines. Martin introduced Kostas to the partisans hiding in the surrounding forests. But the young man did not know that Kostas was a KGB agent sent to Lyn Lake to infiltrate the partisan underground and eliminate their leader. Kostas’s painful betrayal led not only to the deaths of the partisans but also to Martin’s deportation to Siberia. Having returned to Vilnius, Martin starts a family. When fate gives him a chance to escape from the Lithuanian SSR, he finally meets his former teacher, the betrayer, for one last conversation. Šileika’s novel is based on the painful and harrowing life story of the popular post-war children’s writer Kostas Kubilinskas (who was recruited by Soviet security services, betrayed known partisan hideouts in the Varėna District, and shot the leader of the Šarūnas partisan unit: the poet Benediktas Labėnas).
Contact for rights: m.cote@cormorantbooks.com
Contact for samples & other inquiries: kotryna.pranckunaite@lithuanianculture.lt