The Ballads of Kukutis

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Kukutis made his appearance in the Stalinist era, at the height of the forced collectivization of Lithuanian farming by the occupying Soviet forces which saw the obliteration of whole rural communities, and the introduction of oppressive laws and regulations. Completely incapable of understanding, let alone abiding by, these strictures, Kukutis - the outsider, the trickster - functioned outside of regulation and moved between different worlds, unhindered by borders and limits. In creating the character of Kukutis, Marcelijus Martinaitis found a voice which could articulate the anger, frustration and passions of the Lithuanian people, a voice which, contrary to all expectations, managed to escape the Soviet censor’s pen and which, a decade after publication of ‘The Ballads of Kukutis’, was to become the catalyst for revolution in the Baltics. Indeed, during the mass political rallies of the late 1980s and early ‘90s, poems from 'The Ballads’ were chanted, sung and performed everywhere. In this volume, Martinaitis’s witty, ironic and incisive poems are published together, in English in Laima Vince’s superb translation, as a single collection for the first time.