Ričardas Gavelis
After completing high school in Druskininkai, he moved back to Vilnius to pursue a degree in theoretical physics, graduating in 1973.
As a new and promising physicist, he became involved in the Physics and Mathematics Institute of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, after which he began journalistic work.
[7] Gavelis' grandfather was a pedantic farmer who mortgaged his farm immediately after inheriting it, after which he traveled to South Africa in 1925 to work in a diamond mine.
During Soviet occupation of Lithuania, he owned a large amount of land and avoided deportation to Siberia by bribing government officials.
[1] As a physicist, Gavelis was considered one of the most promising new theorists of his generation, actively involved in the research of ferroelectricity and phase transitions.
[5] His literary debut was a collection of short stories entitled Neprasidėjusi šventė, published in 1976[13] in the newspaper Nemunas,[5] for which he was criticized for plagiarizing Gabriel García Márquez.
The book appeared publicly in November 1989, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, also coinciding with Juozas Aputis's modernist novel Anthill in Prussia.
The novel was published with 50,000[8] copies and propelled Gavelis to fame; he was often invited to interviews and television, and was the subject of discussion in newspapers.
[2] He then wrote three novels over the course of five years – Paskutinioji žemės žmonių karta (1995), Prarastų godų kvartetas (1997), Septyni savižudybės būdai (1999).
Gavelis also co-wrote the screenplay with Algimantas Puipa of the movie Forest of the Gods (Dievų miškas), released only in 2005.
[19][9] A book that was a collection of memories about Gavelis, as well as his manuscripts, letters, essays, and creative analysis of his work, was published in 2007.
[24] Gavelis's works explore the nature and relationship of power and evil, and are characterized by themes of death and erotica.
[2] In shorter novels, such as Neprasidėjusi šventė, Įsibrovėliai, Nubaustieji, and Taikos balandis, he explored the motives of human behavior in situations such as disease, exile, and murder.
[2] His work has been described as "intended to mercilessly return readers to the hated and denied inner reality, which needs to be experienced once again" [25] and "anti-romantic",[5] although playful satire and irony is also present.
[5][28][8] Gavelis's works have been translated into English, Latvian, French, Polish, Finnish, German, Macedonian and Belarusian.
[13] Vilnius Poker was written in completely untraditional prose for Lithuanian literature – the story consists of the events of a single week in October told by four different narrators, one of them a dog.
[12] For example, in Taikos balandis, which was written during Lithuania's early years of unstable independence, Gavelis displays Vilnius as a consequence of the Soviet way of life and corruption within the newly formed government.
[2] In Vilnius Poker Gavelis also satirizes the gloomy way of life under totalitarianism, wherein the heroes of novels hide sexual perversions, sadism, madness, violence, and all other negative human qualities under the masks of obedience and decency.
[28] Gavelis explained, in the last interview recorded, creating novels for him is like jazz, in that it's unpredictable and the plot often changes during the process of writing.
