‘There’ (2017)

The novel ‘There’ by Kristīne Ulberga is about people who dared fleeing the mundane life of the Soviet era in search for light. Based on a true events, the story takes place in the 1980s tells about a community of likeminded people, who lived on their own terms in a self-built home ‘Vadaiņi’, in the middle of a swampy forest in the vicinity of Smiltene.

‘When the rebels are crippled in work camps, but the less disobeying are spied on between laquered interiors of their Soviet style communal flats, with the whole-seeing eye of the TV-programme Vremja (the Time), some of the citizens open the doors to the forest to become brothers. There the bog ravens are their own bosses. And the wind that rips off the apple blossoms is just the witche’s hand. To find the door to freedom, you must first step deep into yourself. There you will find a labyrinth, in which the system is more dangerous than the system that rules the outside. ‘ (Andra Manfelde)

The book was published in the series ‘We. Latvia. XX Century.’ within the framework of the SCCF’s target programme ‘National Identity’.