"Vilnius Poker" by Ricardas Gavelis [BTBA 2010 Fiction Longlist]
Over the next seven days, we’ll be highlighting a book a day from the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist. Click here for all past write-ups. Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis. Translated from the Lithuanian by Elizabeth Novickas. (Lithuania, Open Letter) Vilnius Poker may well be one of the darkest ...
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Wait for It . . .
Lithuanian + Zombies =
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Rain Taxi Love for Vilnius Poker
The new issue of Rain Taxi has a really nice review by Alex Starace of Ricardas Gavelis’s Vilnius Poker: As Vilnius Poker begins, the main character, Vytautus Vargalys, has to go to work just like any other citizen in 1970s Lithuania—no matter that he is plagued by sustained paranoia, psychotic visions and ...
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Vilnius Poker in the B&N Spotlight
The Barnes & Noble Review continues to impress me by covering books/movies/CDs that aren’t best-sellers, such as Christopher Byrd’s piece on Vilnius Poker: While reading Ricardas Gavelis’s Vilnius Poker, a line from Joyce’s Ulysses surfaced in my memory, “Stephen bent forward and peered at ...
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Vilnius Poker Review
Over at The Quarterly Conversation, Paul Doyle reviews Vilnius Poker. Ričardas Gavelis wrote to intimidate and attack, and his novel Vilnius Poker, seldom subtle in its language, demands attention. It is a masterwork of bitterness and sarcasm, one that descends into the self-destructive impulses of those who, though ...
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Unfortunately My Lithuanian Is a Bit Rusty
Otherwise I’d translate this article from Lyrtas about Ricardas Gavelis’s Vilnius Poker. (The one part I can pick out is the fantastic translation of my name: “Chadas W. Postas.” Very cool.) Elizabeth Novickas—who has a great introduction to the novel that will appear in the next issue of ...
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Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis
After reading a 20-page sample of Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis, everyone on our editorial committee agreed that we had to publish this book. It’s complicated, dark, occasionally humorous, fragmented, told from several conflicting viewpoints, inconclusive, and considered to be “the turning point in ...
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