Vilnius. Wilno. Vilna. Three Short Stories

Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, Lithuania’s most widely read writer of fiction and a rare case of bestsellerdom meets quality literature, has a Ph. D. in art history and worked for a number of years as a foreign correspondent in London for a leading Lithuanian daily. She is the author of three run-away best-selling novels (Silva rerum, Silva rerum II, and Silva rerum III), covering the history of a Lithuanian family of nobles from the mid-17th to the mid-18th century in the magical and too little-known world of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The historical detail and rich, polyphonic language of her historical novels serve to drive, rather than slow down, the narrative. In her collection of modern stories Danielius Dalba & Other Stories, another bestseller, the author shows what a wide canvas and use of language she is capable of. The three stories chosen here are prose poems to three different Vilniuses – and yet the same Vilnius – seen from different perspectives, Polish, Jewish and Lithuanian. A feast awaits the reader. In 2011 Kristina Sabaliauskaitė was awarded a St. Christopher statue by the Vilnius City Municipality, the highest honour it bestows, for portraying Vilnius in her fiction.