Things in the Night

by Mati Unt and Eric Dickens

Book Overview

Things in the Night explores a world on the edge of disaster--plagued by mysterious power-outages and threatened by ominous conspiracies--juxtaposed against images and stories of unsurpassed beauty and tenderness. Beginning with the simple but moving words, "My Dear, I feel I owe you an explanation," and ending with the passionate, lyrical, and immensely sad, "Those were beautiful years, beautiful autumn days," this astounding novel, set in Estonia...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156478388X
• ISBN13: 9781564783882
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Freeze, Fragmentation, and Collapse

Mati Unt was part of the "Sixties Generation," that cohort of young Estonian writers who came of age as Soviet censorship waned and a new variety of controversial foreign works became available in their country. Any hopes they may have had of "socialism with a human face" were soon thwarted by both the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and the underground availability of Western media, which kept Estonian intellectuals well-informed about events abroad. Stalinism, meanwhile, was starting to dissipate, enabling the introduction of numerous great works of foreign literature. Several especially controversial books, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and the Margarita," were even translated into the Estonian language. The Soviets' reasoning was that so few people (roughly one million) spoke Estonian anyway (Russian was the primary tongue of choice), so what was the harm? Mati Unt's second book, "The Debt," nevertheless caused a storm when it was published in 1964 for failing to adhere to the Soviet version of moral uplift. Not surprisingly then, Unt's 1990 novel "Things in the Night," written very strongly in the postmodernist vein, is centered on questions of subjectivity and the tension of hidden energy. As such, there is little linear plot to speak of, other than a story arch concerning terrorism and conspiracy. As a metaphor, Unt is especially interested in the phenomenon of electricity, that source of power that pervades our homes, schools, business, and government buildings, but which can also behave in strange and surprising ways (a taxi driver's profanity-laden tirade, for example, describes a fishing trip that is disrupted by a bizarre electrical build-up that charges the entire boat and its occupants). This pastiche mode frequently leads the storyline it into other unrelated topics as well (particularly cacti and cannibals), in addition to poems and fragments of other voices and narratives, such as letters, journals, monologues, and the protagonist's planned novel about an anarchist. The effect is altogether that of an extended stream-of-conscious, as the narrator wanders through a homeland either standing on the brink of transformation or doomed to tragedy; clearly, some unseen force is buzzing in the air, and there is an ever-present pressure felt in daily moments. "Because at an everyday level, life in this country is simply appalling, and if you start trying to describe the horror of it, you really have to devote yourself to the task, stack up thousands of pages of all kinds of absurdities, changes in the shops' opening hours, shortages at the greengrocer's, water taps that run without stopping, . . . rudeness and ill-breeding, loud arguments on trains, . . . One would rather push this frustration down into the subconscious. . ." One of the hallmarks of postmodernism is paranoia, and "Things in the Night" exemplifies this motif with a kind of dark subtlety. If the first half of the book feels annoyingly meandering at times, the un