This is one among many instances of the ‘Soviet absurdity of parallel lives’ the daughter experiences while growing up, as she alternates between public enthusiasm for Soviet rule and private rebellion through studying Latvian poetry.

Soviet Milk consists of these two women telling their stories in short alternating sections, manifesting in its form the intimacy and distance of what the daughter calls their ‘two parallel worlds’. This mother is also a daughter, born to a woman who resolved to forget the independent Latvia of her youth, and a father who refused to forget that Latvia condemned him to the gulag. These two women are never named: the first, born in Riga in 1969 in the early years of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule over the Soviet Union, is the daughter of the second, born when Riga was liberated from the Nazis at the end of the Second World War. Birth reminds us that we are always dependent upon another to know the truth of who we are, something few of us ever come to terms with. ‘I don’t remember 22 October 1944,’ says the second, ‘but I can reconstruct it.’ They can only reconstruct what happened because these are the days on which they were born.

‘I don’t remember 15 October 1969,’ says the first. In 2006, she received the Baltic Assembly Prize in literature.Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena opens with two women who cannot remember. Ikstena is an active participant in Latvia's cultural and political life, and a co-founder of the International Writers and Translators’ House in Ventspils. Her story Elza Kuga’s Old Age Dementia was included in the 'Best European Fiction 2011' anthology. Her collection Life Stories (2004) was published in English in 2013, and Hindi in 2015. Ikstena is also a prolific author of biographical fiction, non-fiction, scripts, essays, and collections of short prose. The novel Amour Fou has been staged for theatre, and published in Russian (2010) other works have been translated into Lithuanian, Estonian, Georgian, Swedish, Danish, etc. Soviet Milk (2015, shortlisted for the Annual Literature Award for best prose), Besa (2012), Celebration of Life (1998), The Virgin's Lesson (2001) are some of her most widely appreciated novels. In her prose, Nora Ikstena often reflects on life, love, death and faith. After obtaining a degree in Philology from the University of Latvia in 1992, she went on to study English literature at Columbia University. Ikstena is one of the most visible and influential prose writers in Latvia, known for elaborat style and detailed approach to language. Nora Ikstena is a prose writer and essayist.

Nora ikstena soviet milk