Anthill in Prussia

Anthill in Prussia (Lithuanian: Skruzdėlynas Prūsijoje) is a novella by writer Juozas Aputis. Although he began writing it in 1967, due to Soviet censorship, the book was not published until 1989.^[1] It is one of his most famous and important works,^[2] described as "one of the most prominent phenomenon of national prose",^[3] allegorically covering themes such as existential anxiety, an individual's relationship with history, as well as the persistence of humanity and resistance to violence during times of rationality and irrationality.^[4][5][6]

The 1989 edition contains two short stories in the same book.^[7] One of them, Vargonų balsas skalbykloje (The Organs' Voice in the Washing Room), which first appeared in the Nemunas magazine in 1988^[8] but was written over the previous ten years during Aputis' most challenging creative period,^[9] covers young people's initial youthfulness turned into compromise which deprives them of a full life, in which a multi-perspective narrative reminds of improvisation on the organ.^[6] The story includes the contraposition of youthful maximalism and the conformism of the Era of Stagnation,^[4] and retells the story of three people – a famous organist, a high-ranking official, and his wife.^[9] The second story, Skruzdėlynas Prūsijoje (literally, an Anthill in Prussia), is an allegorical retelling of a man and a woman who, devoting themselves to an ascetic lifestyle, retreat into the wilderness of Prussia. Aputis commented that the premise of the book came to him from a dream, in which you could only protest against the spiritual disorder of the USSR in the manner he described. Because of that, the story contains many fantastical and metaphorical elements.^[6] The story also delves into the fate of the Baltic Prussians, tying them with modern-day Balts of Lithuania and Latvia.^[1][10]