Treading Air

Paigallend ( to German as " on the spot Flies" ) is the title of a novel by the Estonian writer Jaan Kross ( 1920-2007 ). It was Kross ' penultimate novel.

Novel

The novel was published in 1998 in the Estonian language. It has 376 pages in the Estonian original. The book is subtitled Ullo Paeranna romaan ( " novel about Ullo Paerand ").

Paigallend tells the ( fictional ) life story of Ullo Paerand. He belongs to the same generation as the author Jaan Kross.

Paerands biography is closely intertwined with the fate of Estonians in the first half of the 20th century. The story is partly told by Paerand as first-person narrator, partly from the perspective of Paerands schoolmates Jaak Sirkel. Sirkel, Kross ' alter ego, is a character who appears in several works of Jaan Kross, among others, in his novel Wikmani poisid.

Action

Paerand is born as an only child by the name of Ulrich Berends in a typical Estonian middle-class family. The development of novel begins with a review Paerands on a childhood trip to the Germany of the 1920s. Paerands childhood is happy. Economic difficulties begin when his father left the family. Follow Skinny teenage years. But Paerand fights with his mother for a better future. It creates the conclusion to one of the best schools of Tallinn.

Thanks to his quick wit, his good memory and his entrepreneurial skill succeeds Paerand the rise. He makes it to a leadership position in the Estonian State Chancellery. But then comes the Soviet occupation of Estonia 1940/41, followed by the German occupation of 1941 to 1944. Estonian independence is destroyed.

Paerand joins the Estonian nationalists, who want to restore a free Estonia. The opportunity to escape with the help of a representative of the Vatican to the western exile, reject him and his wife at the last moment.

1944 followed by the second Soviet occupation of Estonia, which lasted until the 1990s. That the next forty years until his death in the 1980s Paerand must hire themselves out as a laborer. An economic or social advancement is him under Soviet rule due to his past no longer possible. It represents the future suitcase in a factory here.

Paerand withdraws into the self-denial and inner emigration. A fate that he had to share with many peers Estonians. The novel ends with a vision Paerands: he meets his aged father again, who had fled with his mistress in the West.

Translations

A complete translation into German So far there is not.