POST-EXILE RETURN NARRATIVES: EMPATHY OF THE NOVEL MAYBE IT WAS BY AINA VĀVERE AND BRAVE-HEART OF THE NOVEL CRAVING FOR SUNRISE BY JĀNIS KLĪDZĒJS

Abstract

The article focuses of return narrative in Aina Vāvere’s (1924–2011) novel Maybe It Was (1992) and Jānis Klīdzējs’ (1914–2000) novel Craving for Sunrise (1995). These works show an imaginary landscape of post-exile writers shortly before the Third Awakening and establish the idea of returning to homeland. The term post-exile is used in this article to refer to the end of displacement and achieving national goal of exile – the restoration of Latvian independence. It also marks the formal end of exile [Bannasch et al. 2020]. This allows us to look at the transition as former exile writers search for new themes and portrait meeting with Latvian post-Soviet society. The post-exile concept lacks a specific methodology, so the article uses a postcolonial approach to analyse texts. The structural similarities of the novel’s narrative by different writers appear in post-exile literature. It contained three parts: history of exile, first impressions in Latvia during the Third Awakening, and choices of return. These three narrative parts will form a genre of return novels. The first writers of this narrative were Aina Vāvere and Jānis Klīdzējs, who placed the future of exile at the centre of their works. Their works depict a generation that was either born or grew up in the Latvian exile community, with a sense of belonging inherited from their parents. It refers to forming the hybridity of new transcultural expressions and identities [Bhabha 1994].