Kristina Sabaliauskaite, Silva Rerum & Laimonas Briedis, Vilnius: City of Strangers
5 February, 2009. The Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania presents two authors: art historian Kristina Sabaliauskaitė and cultural geographer Laimonas Briedis, who will be discussing their recent books: a novel, Silva Rerum, and a biography of the city, Vilnius: City of Strangers. Both authors offer provocatively fresh readings of Vilnius, capturing its fascinating history and changing geography with scholarly precision and captivating imagination. The event starts at 7 pm.
Conceived as a magical documentary of Baroque life, Silva Rerum is a metaphysical thriller leading readers through the labyrinth of history by means of a sensual story. The novel depicts the enduring mystery of Vilnius where romantic passion, lust for life and family dramas erupt amidst the ruins of war, religious struggles and urban decadence of seventeenth century Lithuania. Acclaimed by the critics as a new page in Lithuanian literature, the book is a marvellous memento transcending all the conventional boundaries of literary genre and language.
www.silvarerum.lt
www.patogupirkti.lt/book/book.asp?ISBN=9789955232001
Written as a traveller’s tale of discovery, Vilnius: City of Strangers is a geographical novel retracing the meandering pathways of the city on the changing map of Europe. The book, based on foreign accounts of Vilnius, unearths the city as a threshold place of numerous national transformations and personal revolutions. Described by historians as a genuinely new chapter in the historiography of Europe and praised by literary critics for its stunningly beautiful and melancholy evocation of the lost memories of Vilnius, the book is an allegory of the Baroque city where the dead and living greet each other as familial strangers.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9639776440/ref=nosim/porfessionalp4-20
http://www.patogupirkti.lt/book/book.asp?isbn=9789955231608
5 February, 7 pm, Lithuanian Embassy in London (84 Gloucester Place, London W1U 6AU, Tube: Baker Street)
RSVP: culture@lithuanianembassy.co.uk, tel. 020 7935 9872
