Teachers - Andris Akmentiņš

Andris Akmentiņš’s novel “Teachers” has been published in the Latvian 20th century history series. “Teachers” mainly takes us to the Khrushchev era and shows the absurdity of the Soviet system through the eyes of teachers and students at a village school. The book centers around a family of teachers, where the baton is passed down from generation to generation. Milking a cow before going to school, restrictions on movement in the forest and by the sea, the bitter fruits of what at first glance seems comfortable Komsomol work, the village’s secret plan to be the first in the world to introduce communism, and the complex relationships of ordinary people create a plot that unfolds layer by layer from the different perspectives of the book’s four main characters. The book is suitable for both the older generation as a source of nostalgia and for the younger generation to imagine what life was like back then.
The afterword to the Estonian translation of the book was written by historian Mart Laar.

Original title Skolotāji. In Estonian

Keywords:
Myself
history
fiction