Autumn 2013

Rein Raud
Rekonstruktsioon
(The Reconstruction)
Tallinn, Mustvalge Kirjastus, 2012. 264 pp
ISBN: 9789949927715
Rein Raud (Photo by Scanpix)
medieval Tallinn. After publishing the
third book, Hargla received the annual
award of the Estonian Cultural Endowment
in 2011 for this series of historical
crime novels, for his continuing high
standard of creative work and for his
genre diversity.
Apothecary Melchior and the
Strangler of Pirita is the long-awaited
fourth book of the Melchior series, and it
is as fascinating as all the previous books
featuring Melchior. With well-developed
characters and skillful building of tension,
Hargla keeps his readers reading late
into the night. His detailed depiction of
the medieval environment carries readers
back to the beginning of the 15th century.
This time Melchior is asked to come to
the Pirita convent and join an extraordinarily
convened council of wise men.
On his way to the convent, Melchior finds
a dead body in a snowdrift. As it turns
out, the first victim of the strangler of
Pirita is not the last one. After finding the
next victim, Melchior swears to Abbess
Kandis, in the name of Saint Birgitta, that
he will reveal the murderer and solve
these crimes. This investigation leads
Melchior to astounding secrets about the
distant past. At the same time, difficulties
arise at home in Tallinn. MI
This is a story about seeking security and
longing for certainty, a story about searching
for truth and universal answers, about
searching but not finding. Having doubts,
while also yearning for absolute truth, can
lead us to estrangement from reality. It
slowly cuts us off from our everyday life and
from the people who love us. Where does
dedication end and obsession begin?
Five years after losing his daughter Anni,
Enn Padrik finds out that he has cancer. As
he doesn’t have much time left in this world,
he decides to finally do something he should
have done a long ago. Finding out the whole
story behind his daughter’s suicide becomes
Enn’s last mission. All he knows is that it was
a collective suicide in a community of
intellectuals, probably committed for
religious reasons. He travels around Estonia
and even goes to France to meet people
who had known Anni. The process of
patching different memories and stories into
one whole turns out to be more complicated
than Enn thought. But little by little the start
starts to emerge. At the end of his quest,
Enn comes to understand that it doesn’t
matter whether what we believe in is actually
true or not. What matters is how these
beliefs change us, and what kind of people
we become by believing what we believe.
The story is very thought-provoking but,
despite the heaviness of the theme, it’s not
moralizing or otherwise patronizing to its
readers. It’s a deeply psychological novel,
written in a gripping way. Realistic and
accurately described characters make the
story plausible, even though problems with
religious sects are not common in Estonian
society.
Rein Raud (b. 1961) received the literary
prose award of the Estonian Cultural