Book 171: Estonia – The Czar’s Madman = Keisri Hull (Jaan KROSS)

So, back to the first question: should I support him in his madness or in his sanity?

            That would seem to depend on whether he is, in fact, mad or sane. I can’t tell – I don’t even know what I consider him to be. Is it possible to recover from such a state, in such circumstances? I believe (while being aware of my deep ignorance, I still have to voice an opinion) – I believe that such a recovery may well be rare but not impossible.

Timo has been released from prison into house arrest but is still in danger from police informers. He is generally considered to be insane (if you criticise the tsar, not to mention if you are a noble who marries a peasant woman, ipso facto you are mad), and it was his madness that got him out of prison. He has written a dangerous critical memorandum to the then Tsar (Alexander I) – posing a dilemma for the narrator, the brother of his wife (Eeva), who has discovered it in its hiding place and has to decide what to do (most of all, whether he really is mad, or just pretending to be for his protection). And what is the secret link between Timo and the tsar?

The narrator, Jakob, keeps an equally dangerous secret diary over the decades, which is this novel, supposedly found long after the events.

The characters in the novel are great, especially the enigmatic Timo, who has the enormous courage, morality, brainpower and luck – in short, ‘character’ – needed by the dissident. He is ‘guarded’ by the clever, beautiful Eeva (who is nevertheless not a comfortable fit in her newfound nobility), then also by the much less sympathetic Peter Mannteufel (whose surname aptly means “man devil” in German).

Kross is one of Estonia’s best writers, who was himself imprisoned by the Russians (under the USSR), and this novel, written during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, carries clever criticism of Russian authoritarianism, though it is far more than that. He, and his novel (one of the best historical novels I’ve read, though you might like to brush up on your Russian history of the period before starting – it’s based on a true story), deserve a much wider audience abroad.

Kross, Jaan (1920 – 2007), The Czar’s Madman, translated by Anselm Hollo, London, Harvill Press, 2003, ISBN 9781860465796

(first published in Estonian 1978 as Keisri Hull)