Vilnius Poker

A dark, enigmatic, and visceral examination of the psychology of repression, Vilnius Poker dives into the minds of four narrators whose contradictory memories challenge the very idea of truth. In this masterpiece written "for the drawer," Vilnius itself becomes a presence possessing a will, a consciousness and, worse, an intent. First published in 1989 when Lithuania was on the verge of breaking away from the Soviet Union, this book raised a firestorm for its brutality, frank sex, and its destruction of the myths of Lithuanian history.

Literature & Fiction

Gavelis, Ricardas

Literary

Pica Pica Press

"This book is not for the faint of heart," Andrew Wessels has observed about Ricardas Gavelis's Vilnius Poker, and this is all the more true for Sun-Tzu's Life in the Holy City of Vilnius, the last work the Lithuanian master of the macabre wrote before his sudden death in 2002 at the age of 52. Gavelis, as always, ladles deeply from the wellspring of history, but the novel, although set inside the corruption and cynicism of Lithuania's post-Soviet space, is horrifyingly prescient of today's politics, when Russia is ruled by a KGB agent and the United States by a reality TV star. The novel takes the form of an authobigraphy of a man we know only as the Sun-Tzu of Vilnius, a child prodigy, revolutionary, and government puppet master, who retreats to an underground compound to wage war on the cockles of the earth. Be prepared for the Gavelis rollercoaster, as he weaves together a story of great loves and great hates, the mundane and the strange, the hunter and the hunted, the horror and the humor that startlingly erupts out of the blackest of situations. As Gavelis himself wrote about the book, "when good and evil intersect within a single person's heart, expect hideous results."

Sun-Tzu's Life in the Holy City of Vilnius

Levas Ciparis, the anti-hero of this masterly critique of life in the late Soviet Union, is a man alone and he desperately wants to belong. He is obstructed in this quest by his own innocence and decency. In fact, the irresolvable tension between moral probity and necessary compromise is one of the many themes of this novel. Ciparis writes letters to his estranged friend Tomas Kelertas, with whom he has something of a love-hate relationship, which became more obsessive after their estrangement. The randomness of life does not always work against Ciparis, as he recounts his experiences from sickly child in a basement flat to his final moments in Leningrad when all options fall away. The system can work in his favor - primarily through a marriage that gains him a father-in-law who is a powerful, intelligent and utterly corrupt politician at the top of the Soviet regime in Lithuania - but ultimately there is no place for him in that society or perhaps anywhere.

Memoirs of a Life Cut Short

Vagabond Voices

Detailing a man's mental breakdown—and his obsession with a seductress named Lolita, the omnipresent "them," and the need to uncover what's "really going on"—Vilnius Poker is an epic, paranoid novel about the surreal absurdities and horrors of life under Soviet rule. In the words of Kirkus Reviews, "think of it as The Matrix behind the Iron Curtain—unsettling and profoundly interesting."

Contemporary

Open Letter

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Books by Gavelis, Ricardas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gavelis, Ricardas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Vilnius Poker

Sun-Tzu's Life in the Holy City of Vilnius

Memoirs of a Life Cut Short

Vilnius Poker