On March 2, 2016, Dr Giedrė Milerytė-Japertienė, a senior researcher at the Lithuanian Studies Research Department of the National Library of Lithuania, participated in a discussion organised by the Lithuanian Embassy in Warsaw together with Vytautas Magnus University and Warsaw University Eastern Europe Studies Centre. The discussion, based on two newly published books, Lithuanian and Polish Relations in Exile, 1945-1990 (ed. Giedrė Milerytė-Japertienė) and The Dynamics of Relations Between Lithuania and Poland: From Historical Experience to Contemporary Situations (ed. Mindaugas Norkevičius, Gintarė Lukoševičiūtė, and Ieva Masiliūnaitė), was attended by the Warsaw academic community. The discussion also covered Jurgis Giedraitis’ (Jerzy Giedroyc) intellectual legacy and influence on the present day Lithuanian and Polish relations. The discussion was led by Jan Malicki, the director of Warsaw University Eastern Europe Studies Centre.
The novel Odilė, arba Oro uostų vienatvė (Odile or the Loneliness of Airports) is written by Valdas Papievis, who has been living between Paris and Vilnius for more than a decade. His newest book tells a story about the loneliness of an independent human being and the everyday life of a French aristocrat in Paris.
The second finalist, Buying on Time, by Canadian-Lithuanian author, Antanas Šileika, consists of thirteen interrelated short stories about Lithuanian emigrant family life in Canada told with plenty of humour and gentle irony. Although it seems that the author tells his own story, in fact, this book is not autobiographical. Šileika’s book has received considerable attention in Canada and has won several awards.
The author of the third contestant and the winner of the Best Lithuanian Book-2015, Iš dviejų renkuosi trečią: mano mažoji odisėja (Out of the Two I Prefer the Third: My Little Odyssey), Dalia Staponkutė, is a Lithuanian writer, philosopher and translator currently living in Cyprus. In her second book, Staponkutė continues to tell the story about her journey as a Lithuanian, a woman and a mother abroad, only this time, from cultural and philosophical reflections she turns toward intimacy. The book also won the prize for the most creative book of the year in Lithuania.
At the age of five, Tony Mankus along with his family was forced to leave Lithuania during World War II. The feeling and even pain of being exiled has never left him, neither in his young days spent in the DP camp in Germany, nor in old age living in the United States. “Where do I belong? Where is my place?” are key questions that Mankus tries to answer in his book “Where Do I Belong To?: An Immigrant’s Quest for Identity”(2013). This frank and unsentimental story will be of a special interest to those readers who want to learn more about authentic experiences of immigrants.