Mehis Heinsaar

Teaser Introduction to Estonia's Magic-Realist
Review of the 3 story mini-book published by Paper+Ink 2018

There are about a dozen English translations of the short stories of Estonian magic-realist writer Mehis Heinsaar that are in print or online. Many of them are available through online literary journals listed at the writer's entry at the Tartu University Estonian Writers' Online Dictionary at https://sisu.ut.ee/ewod/h/mehisheinsaar/prose. There is also the story "Foxes and Birds" at the Estonian Literature Centre at http://www.estlit.ee/elis/?cmd=writer&id=48088&txt=22503. The story "Aspendal the Rainmaker" was collected in "The Dedalus Book of Estonian Literature" (2011).

The present collection is from a new short-story publishing house called Paper+Ink. Their initial catalogue contains several classic short-story writers along with 3 Baltic writers. Besides Heinsaar there are the Lithuanian Žemaitė and the Latvian Rūdolfs Blaumanis in their initial list. Presumably the focus will expand to other countries and languages in the future. The idea behind the catalogue is to encourage readers to explore the classics along with taking chances on writers that they may not have previously heard of, all at reasonable prices, i.e. the books list for £2.99/U.S. $4.95/ €3.50.

Mehis Heinsaar is represented by his Tuglas Award winning story Liblikmees (The Butterfly Man) (2001) translated by Tiina Randviir, Kaunitar, kes oli kõike juba näinud (The Beauty Who Had Seen It All) (2010) and Suur Hooaeg (The High Season) (2007), the last two both translated by Adam Cullen. All of the stories involve characters who develop or obtain magical / otherworldly abilities who then interact somehow with the "real" world, usually with romanticized and tragic results. All of them have a mischievous charm to them.

I was especially pleased with the quality of the production of this mini-book and that it was free of the typos and copy-editing errors that I have often found in modern translations.… (mais)