VILNIUS - "I am a prominent public figure, and therefore I sometimes have to fulfil strange social functions - I have to be a talk-show expert, a witch and after my trip to the Himalayas, I was even asked to help patients in a coma, despite my protestations that I'm just a writer and do not have magic powers." So Jurga Ivanauskaite, arguably Lithuania's most popular and best-known author, once described herself.
Ivanauskaite is rarely out of the media in Lithuania and considering how amazingly productive she is, it's easy to see why. By the end of this year she will have five books, both new and old, hit bookstores.
"A Dance in the Desert" is the first compilation of Ivanauskaite's poetry, which the author herself describes as her most explicit book. Considering the author, that's saying something. In sharp contrast to that she's also bringing out a children's book, "How Marsis Searched for Happiness on Earth," which is also illustrated by Ivanauskaite.
New editions of the author's groundbreaking novels "Moon Children" and "The Witch and the Rain" were also published, and her immensely popular travelogue about the Himalayas is also being reissued later this year, which will include previously unpublished photos taken on her travels.
Following her successful debut at the Frankfurt Book Fairy 2002, Ivanauskaite became the most famous contemporary Lithuanian writer in Europe. Since then, the German language version of her most popular novel "The Witch and the Rain" has been republished three times.
However, the 1993 debut of the "Witch and the Rain" was not quite as eagerly welcomed in Lithuania. The novel was a source of major controversy that provoked widespread public debate about censorship and the role of the state in a free society. The national ethics commission banned the book for being pornographic and anti-Christian. Strict Roman Catholic followers (which were very much "the big thing" in the first years following independence) particularly took offense at the book.
After all the scandal surrounding her, the author headed on her first trip to India and vowed to stick to travel books. During her trip to Tibet, Ivanauskaite started studying Tibetan Buddhism, which in turn inspired her to begin a new period of writing.
Born into an artistic family (her grandfather was a poet, her grandmother an art critic and her father a painter), it's little surprise that Ivanauskaite started out studying art at the Vilnius Art Institute. But she felt deeply frustrated by the attitudes of the professors there. "I could not find a common language with my professors. I felt an intense allergy toward art for at least 10 years after I graduated," she once said.
It's good to see that Ivanauskaite, who has become almost an institution of anti-institutionalism in Lithuania, is still around, and busier than ever before.
