The story collection Gadflies and Demons is Einfelds’ ninth book. The gadflies and demons in this book are not only metaphorical, but also quite palpable and present. The author and his alter ego Fabulu Jūlis take the reader through the absurd realities of capitalism in the 1990s, while also still managing to entertain. The author asks the reader to confront the question: are those of us living right here, right now, really all that different from the characters in the book, and if we aren’t, what can we expect in our own future? The collection’s eponymous first part brings this question to the forefront, but in its second part, the miniature cycle Winter, which is focused on one of the characters from Gadflies and Demons, the reader journeys along with the author as he unpacks this question on an unstoppable ride into the void. Einfelds’ prose weaves together a surreal worldview with the grotesque, realistic, even rough and naturalistic details of everyday life existing alongside a sense of the romantic and the pain that comes from the fragile nature of ideals in our world today.

Contact: Dace Sparāne-Freimane, dace.sparane-freimane@dgramata.lv