A popular author in Lithuania, albeit with a strong Soviet identity,[1] among his best known works are the 1947 play Gieda gaideliai (The Cocks Are Crowing), the novel Parduotos vasaros (Sold-out Summers), first published in two volumes in 1957 and 1969 and Sakmė apie Juzą (The Tale of Juzas), a 1979 universal piece of literature which won the Lithuanian SSR State Prize and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (French literary prize).
During World I, the family moved east and lived in the Russian cities of Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, and Tsaritsky (Volgograd).
[2] Baltušis grew up in Puponiai until leaving the family home in 1929 and moving to live in Kaunas, where he found work in various printing houses as a messenger and letter collector.
He began to write humorous plays during the 1930s,[2] and he published short story collections such as The Week Begins Well (1940) and White Clover (1943).
From 1946 to 1954 and then 1958 until 1962 he worked as the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Pergalė and also served as the chairman of the organizational office of the Lithuanian Cinematography Workers' Union.
[2] In 1979, Baltušis published one of his most acclaimed and successful works, Sakmė apie Juzą (The Tale of Juzas), a depiction of the hermit Jesus, who finds it impossible to hide from global cataclysms such as genocide and war.