Burning Cities
SynopsisPlot
Opening up about her family history, Tiina revisits the first two decades of her life following World War II, in Tartu, Estonia. The adult world that makes up Communist society is one of cryptic conversations, dread, and heavy drinking. From the death of Stalin to the gradual separation of her parents, Tiina experiences events from the periphery, and is powerless to prevent the defining tragedy in her life—a suicide in the family.
Story
About this book
Burning Cities follows Tiina as she looks back on the first twenty years of her life in Tartu, Estonia, beginning in the aftermath of World War II. Tartu was heavily damaged during the Nazi invasion and then reshaped under Soviet control, its streets renamed and its buildings reconstructed. In this changed city, Tiina grows up absorbing the secrets of the adults around her, even when she is too young to understand what they mean. Conversations at home are guarded, and the atmosphere is shaped by anxiety and alcohol.
The novel traces both private and public turning points. Stalin's death, the slow unraveling of Tiina's parents' marriage, and the routines of life under Communist rule all register through the eyes of a child who watches from the edges of events she cannot influence. At the center of the story is a family suicide, a loss that defines Tiina's memory of this period. Kai Aareleid's narrative stays close to the texture of daily experience in Soviet Estonia, where political control and personal grief overlap in ordinary rooms. The English translation brought this Estonian novel to a wider readership for the first time.
