The Glass Shards takes place on a specific threshold of time, when all the events that could lead to the culmination of a war are already in motion. Through the individual struggles and decisions of its characters, the novel tries to make sense of how what happened in Latvia during World War II came to be. Since the novel came out, it seems clear that it was written with a desperate attempt to understand the mechanics of what lead us, as a society, to war, as well as the individual relationships within a society.

      The main character of the novel is Magdalena Cirule—a patient from a psychoneurological hospital who is pregnant with the child of her attending physician. Magdalena is Dr. Karlis Vilks-Krideners’ ideal patient; he came to Latvia from Germany after his grandmother refused to continue financing his psychotherapy research, which was considered rather avant-garde, even by the hospital in Munich where he worked. But Karlis can’t continue practicing in Munich because he believes he could better help patients through treatments that don’t use chemical or mechanical means.

        Magdalena suffers from a high level of anxiety, and has a tendency to black out after being touched—either intentionally or unintentionally. But the hospital director, Valdis Gudsbergs, has concerns over whether the hospital has enough room for all its patients, and thinks that Magdalena should have been sent home to her parents ages ago. However, Magdalena’s father is the mayor of Rezekne, and her parents worry that their daughter’s presence at home will negatively impact their public image. It is for this reason they are willing to pay for Magdalena’s “luxury suite” at the Strenci Psychoneurological Hospital, an institution where the middle-class patients frequently end up sleeping in the corridors.

Contacts: dace.sparane-freimane@dgramata.lv www.dgramata.lv

In her novel The Beautiful Ones, Inga Gaile tries to understand how she and her contemporaries have been influenced by two tragedies of the 20th century: Nazism and Stalinism. It is the author’s attempt to tell a story about people who managed to stay humane despite the impossible circumstances, guided by a
hope to live more freely. One of her themes is that the dual value system—good/ bad, beautiful/ugly—is limiting for humanity. The novel has three parts, each
with a female protagonist. First is Violeta, who is imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1941. The protagonist of the second part is Magdalēna, who is also a protagonist in Gaile’s first novel, The Glass Shards. We meet Magdalēna
in Latvia in 1953. The protagonist of the third part is Magdalēna’s granddaughter, Duks—our contemporary. She has, however, never met her grandmother; she is also indirectly connected to Violeta. The novel’s main themes are beauty, a woman’s outer appearance, and the different ways women are objectified. This story also shows what happens to women who experience violence, and how they deal with it.

The novel talks about concentration camp brothels, which is a subject that hasn’t really been discussed before. It describes the fates of women who worked in the brothels of the era, and the fates of any children born as a result. The broader descriptions of this period of history tend to lack the voices of witnesses. On the other hand, more and more historical researchers are trying to add the missing testimonies to history, giving authors like Gaile access to records about women who worked in concentration camp brothels, or women who were subject to the Soviet Army’s rape march.

The Beautiful Ones is a literary work that employs many historical facts. Among them are Katrīna Vaica’s lynching trial in the Ravensbrück camp, the punishment of prisoners during the subsequent search for Katrīna, the brothels themselves and how they were organized, experiments, how the camp was liberated, and how children deported to Siberia were sent back to Latvia.

Contact: dace.sparane-freimane@dgramata.lv