Vilmos Kondor (Hungary)
Vilmos Kondor (b 1954) is a pseudonym, the author does not wish to reveal his real name to the public. Neither does he participate in the Hungarian literary life and agrees to be interviewed very rarely and only by email. He communicates with the literary world through his publisher. All we know about him comes from the cover texts of his books: he has studied in Szeged and Paris, having received the diploma of a chemistry engineer, teaches mathematics and physics in a small town of Western Hungary and lives in a village together with his twin daughters, a dog and a falcon.
Budapest noir is a series of historical crime novels of classical plot written in a wonderful Hungarian language. Two books of the series have been translated into Estonian, the third will reach the reader by the time of Prime Vista in September 2021.
The first book of the series Budapest noir takes the reader to the Hugarian capital Budapest in the 1930s. We can call the book a social crime novel for in addition to the intriguing murder case the author paints a detailed picture of life in the pre-war Central European city. The novel depicts both the splendour and the dark side of life, the cafes of the main street and the illegal boxing rings, businessmen ready for everything flirting with national socialism and poor village girls entering the sex market of the city. Budapest noir is the most popular crime novel of the recent decades, of which a film has also been made. The book has been successful in other places of the world, having been translated into Polish, Dutch, English, and Finnish. In 2018 the author won the prize of the Finnish Crime Fiction Society.
The events of the second novel of the series Patune Budapest (Sinful Budapest) begin in 1939, in the first weeks of World War II. Great numbers of refugees arrive to the Hungarian borders from Poland. In all this havoc three red cross vehicles transporting morphine and cocaine meant for treating soldiers get lost. In Budapest at the same time an unknown young woman drowns in a swimming pool. The clues of both cases lead to the most influential circles. The Hungarian world is much gloomier than a few years ago, people have much fewer choices than before. The Jew laws repress intellectuals, fascist gangs do what they will and the former red headsmen work as the state interrogators. Behind the mask of a gentleman often a criminal is hidden; the hunger for power and money is unlimited.
The third book of the series Budapesti spioon (The Budapest Spy) will be published in Estonian in September 2021.
The author will be represented at the festival by his publisher Zoltán Pap.
Yelena Skulskaya (Estonia)
Yelena Skulskaya is a well known author, essayist, poet, and translator, the author of nearly 30 prose books (including a novel titled Marmori luik (A Swan of Marble), memoirs of Sergei Dovlatov, and a collection of essays Armastus vene kirjanduses (Love in Russian Literature), a finalist of the prestigious Russian Booker Prize and the winner of the International Russian Prize, triple winner of the Estonian Cultural Foundation Prize in literature, and the art director of the international festival “Dovlatov’s Days in Tallinn”.
Yelena Skulskaya was born in Tallinn and has graduated from the University of Tartu in the field Russian language and literature She has worked as a teacher at the Tallinn 20th High School and as a journalist. In 1996 – 2008 she was the teacher of the theatre studio of the Russian Drama Theatre and is since 2008 the anchorwoman of the Estonian television broadcast Batareya. Her first published work appeared in 1968 in a poetry collection titled Tutvustus (Getting Acquainted). Now Skulskaya is the author of 13 books and one of the most important representatives of the Russian-language literary culture and opinion leaders in Estonia. Her works have also been published in Latvia, Russia, the U.S.A., Austria, and Israel. She has translated a lot of Estonian poetry into Russian.
Tuesday, September 21st
Thursday, September 23rd
18.00 Literary night with Jelena Skulskaya in the hall of Tartu City Museum
Victor Shenderovich (Russia)
One of the visitors of the Prima Vista Russian programme is the oppositional Russian public figure, author, liberal journalist, columnist of the magazine The New Times, legendary scriptwriter (Dolls), anchorman and TV star (Echo of Moscow, Radio Liberty and RTV1), a well-known satirist and very witty man Victor Shenderovich (1958).
Victor Shenderovich is the winner of several reputable literary, theatre and TV prizes. Shenderovich studied the art of staging at the Moscow State Institute of Culture and the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts and has worked at the Moscow Art Theatre. He became a member of the Russian Writers’ Union in 1992. He has written more than 20 books, most of them political/satirical.
His satire shows the present day Russia and one of the objects of satire in his work has been the President of Russia Vladimir Putin. Shenderovich who in his own words was earlier forbidden to leave Russia meets his public now in the Western countries, for he cannot do it freely in his homeland.
Tuesday, September 21st
18.00 Literary night with Victor Shenderovich (Russia) at the Tubin hall of Eller Music School
Wednesday, September 22nd
Uwe Laub (Germany)
Uwe Laub (b 1971), an author of science thrillers, was born in Roumania and grew up in Germany. Before becoming a writer, he worked as a stockbroker and in the pharmaceutical industry. He started writing his thrillers in his mid-thirties and is now an entrepreneur.
His debut novel about climatic changes called Blow Out (2013) was surprisingly successful. Laub’s second novel Sturm, 2018 (Storm), a thriller concentrating on storms and hurricanes, was in 2019 translated into Estonian by Piret Pääsuke and published by the publishing house Ühinenud Ajakirjad. Uwe Laub’s third novel Leben (Life) focuses on global extinction of species and the accompanying pandemic.
Laub’s thriller Storm begins with a description of all kinds of inexplicable weather phenomena: the Berlin olympic stadium is hit by a tornado, the city of Hannover by a powerful hail, the permafrost of Siberia melts due to the temperature rise , etc. There is human sacrifice, panic arises. Laub approaches the problems of climate from a definite aspect, regarding a sphere not so often talked about – climate manipulation.
The story is written following the genre rules of a thriller: the author takes the reader to a probable future showing how climate manipulation can be used as a weapon. To write this novel, the author studied its themes for several years and thus the reader gets a historical overview of the problem as well as the information about the present situation on a thrilling background.
To sum up , it can be said, using the author’s own words, that his novels discuss big global problems like the extinction of species, climate changes and weather. He tries to open up and above all to describe the big and complex connections between the processes occurring on our planet and does it in a thrilling and, above all, informative way.
This year the theme of Prima Vista is Small World. What does this pair of words mean to you?
For me, the words “small world” are the symbol of the present day global network.If we think of the Internet the world has never been so big and at the same time so small. I can see my family or friends in the other end of the world and talk to them using a click of the mouse and sitting on my sofa. In a sense it is wonderful but it is also true that in this way understanding of the size of our planet and its sublimity becomes lost.
Tuesday, September 21st
18.00 Meeting with German writer Uwe Laub in the hall of Tartu Public Library