The daughter is equally intelligent and as she grows discovers how her curiosity is equally curtailed by a regime that seeks to instil only a Soviet-approved point of view. She’s an intellectual who hordes works of literature that have been banned and experiences severe mental health problems.

In some ways it feels like the mother can’t nurture her daughter because she can’t inhabit a fully rounded identity under the Soviet system. Something had excluded me from this mystery, which I wanted to investigate to the very core, to discover its true nature.” She feels “I had carried and given birth to a child, but I had no maternal instincts. It’s ironic that the mother specializes in reproduction, yet finds no motivation to mother her own daughter. Gradually their narratives come together until they occur in a simultaneous time period. Meanwhile the daughter describes the painful experience of feeling unwanted and being raised by her grandmother and step-grandfather because her mother is incapable of caring for her. This is a moving and achingly poignant story of an unconventional mother-daughter relationship and a country undergoing radical social change as Latvia regains its independence.Īt first the mother and daughter’s sections are separated by years of time as the mother describes her childhood and the very different landscape of Latvia during WWII. Equally the daughter struggles to grow and nurture her developing intellect in such a regimental system. The mother is a skilled doctor specializing in female fertility, but finds life in the communist system stiflingly oppressive. They have a tumultuous relationship with each other and both struggle to find their place in society because this was a period of time when Latvia was still under Soviet rule. The story alternates between the perspectives of an unnamed mother and daughter over a number of years from 1969 to 1989. This book won the Annual Latvian Literature Award in 2015, but has only just been translated and published in English. So I was thrilled to read “Soviet Milk” by established author Nora Ikstena.

I’m aware that there is a vibrant literary scene in Latvia, but translations of new Latvian fiction are slow in making their way to the West. It’s really exciting seeing the international book community experiencing a surge of interest in Latvian literature.

Soviet milk by nora ikstena