Sofi Oksanen and When the Doves Disappeared

This historical novel is set in Estonia, switching between the early Soviet occupation of the country in 1940 before the Germans arrived in 1941, and the subsequent return of the Soviets. Through this period there was an unsuccessful struggle for Estonian independence, supported to an extent by Finland, which had its own problems with the USSR.

Estonia is a tiny country, just above Latvia and Lithuania, across the sea from Finland. I knew nothing about it before I read this book and, if nothing else, the novel is a helpful history lesson. The story focuses on the relationship between Roland, an underground fighter for Estonian independence throughout these periods of occupation, his cousin Edgar, an unprincipled turncoat, whose loyalties switch with whoever is in power, and Juudit, the unhappy wife of Edgar, whose search for personal happiness leads her into politically compromising situations, including a love affair with an SS officer. Switches between the period of German occupation and the 1960s under the Soviets, enable the author to tell a story in which the past lives of the protagonists are constantly threatening to catch up with them.

Edgar’s involvement in spying on his fellow citizens, engineering their fates so that his own position is protected, and creating propaganda for both the Nazis and the Soviets in a craven search for advancement and survival, is conveyed very effectively. His cousin Roland’s story becomes submerged out as the story of Juudit emerges, although Roland’s continuing survival in the underground acts as a spur for Edgar’s schemes, since Roland knows far too much for Edgar to feel safe. Roland also acts as a guilty conscience for Juudit, driving her at times to take actions that undermine her own security in the fear-laden atmosphere that accompanies both the Nazi and the Soviet repression.

The novel does a very good job in conveying the paranoid world generated by two different police states, and the effect of this on family loyalties. The story both jumps between time periods and moves from character to character without, sometimes, explaining their changes of name and identity, requiring the reader to figure this out. This provides a somewhat fractured experience for the reader, which is perhaps to mimic the fractured consciousness of the characters, who are constantly negotiating forces pulling them one way or another. Edgar, in particular, ducks and weaves his way as if through an obstacle course, emerging in the end as a wholly psychotic character. The regimes he serves encourage this psychosis, providing the links between politics and personality that a great historical novel requires.

Sofi Oksanen sees this as a ‘post-colonial’ novel, where the coloniser is an imperialistic USSR. The postscript to the book suggests that she is concerned about dangers of current Russian foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine. This is a historical novel, then, which serves both as a history lesson about a part of the world that is little-known to many English speaking readers, and a warning about what is happening in the here and now.

Here is a link to the author’s website

And here’s a link to the book’s Amazon page

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