A.H. Tammsaare

A.H. Tammsaare (I Loved a German, Truth and Justice pentalogy) was born in 1878 into a poor farming family in a small Estonian village. Due in part perhaps to his family’s unusual intellectual curiosity, Tammsaare raised money for an education and studied law at the University of Tartu until he was hospitalised with tuberculosis in 1911. After a year in hospital he spent six years recovering on his brother’s farm. When Estonia became independent, he moved to Tallinn in 1920 and embarked on the most productive period of his life.

His greatest influences were Russian realists such as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol, but his work also shows the influence of Oscar Wilde, Knut Hamsun and André Gide. He occupies a central role in the development of the Estonian novel and is a figure of European significance. He died in 1940, in the midst of the Republic’s most difficult times.