About the work
The novel was written in 1988–1982 and published in 1993; it is the novelist’s third work. It has not yet been translated.
Structure and plot
The novel involves several characters, most of them young, whose stories are told in parallel. The main character is Tomas Kelertas, a talented physics student. He is surrounded by a number of people with whom he forms various relationships. Some are dying, some leave Vilnius; others merge together, creating a single person out of several. The dominant motif is change, as each of the characters becomes something else by the end of the novel under the influence of a guru of the absurd known as Bakneris. Unlike Vilnius Poker, where people’s isolation and the reclusiveness of their narratives is ultimately unsurmountable, the characters in Vilnius Jazz are able to see and hear one another, including telepathically.
Like the idea of the merging characters, the work’s “musical” character directs the idiosyncratic narrative structure: the narrative switches between characters and persons without warning or explanation, creating the impression of a continuous polyphony. Vilnius’s “Lithuanian,” “Polish,” “Russian,” and “Jewish” melodies intertwine in the orchestra’s composition. At the end of the novel, the hero turns into a black crow who rises above the city and flies into the distance, “driven by an unquenchable sense of freedom.”