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Sofi Oksanen's Stalinist Mythology
The immense success of Sofi Oksanen's novel "Purge" astonishes me. The book falls into the same category as the Stalinist books of my childhood, only the heroes and anti-heroes have changed their roles. My objection to the book is that it pretends to be a realistic story about life in Soviet Estonia in the second half of the 20th century, and seems to have been accepted as such in Europe and America.

Sofi Oksanen, who has no direct experience of the time and events she describes, has taken parts of our life, sewing them together according to some age-old rules of ideological-mythological literature, and is now selling it in the West. She is selling something that pretends to be our life, but is not. I do not want anybody to take my life away from me and sell an adulterated version of it to unknowing people abroad.

http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/2010/08/sofi-oksanen-and-stalin-award.html
Filed under: Estonia History Literature Sofi Oksanen Soviet
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