Oswald Zebra’s latest novel is alive! About Frici Freemand / Day

Oswald Zebra’s prose book – novel _ Life! _ – tells about the myth, the birth of a myth, and about the man who goes to look for their folk songs and stories that turn out to be much stronger and lonely than man’s own, because – they turn out to be alive! This is, at the same time, and is not a novel about the Latvian folklore collectors Frei Freemand. It is basically about the myth’s power and obsession that comes from believers.

“Oswald Zebra’s novel Live! Scratches a thoroughly scratching a monument built in a nation’s culture in the memory of a nation. The protagonist Fricis Treilands, or Brīvzemnieks, in front of the readers from a surveyor in a foreign country becomes a researcher and folklore collector of his people. But you are not deceived, the novel is not about writing down folk songs. Alive!, Like Umberto Eco Prague Cemetery, It intertains the cosmopolitan spirit of the era with spy stories and the creation of the character’s personality. The heroes of the novel are pulled into an exciting adventure in search of their roots, real and false people, as well as the beginning of the world, and its venues change from the provisions of Moscow and Inner Russian to the villages of Kurzeme and the waters of the Daugava.

Fricis Brīvzemnieks was alive in the novel, just as folk songs were alive, which he collected in the late 19th century, ”Gustav Strenga, a cultural historian.

« The story when it is written becomes fateful in its immutable, because it has to be fulfilled exactly as expected. However, every reader understands the story in a different way, in his own only possible way and reading the resurrection, making it alive – as lively as the blue on the cover of the book.

Book artist Sarmīte Māliņa.