The prose by Andrus Kivirähk is one of the brightest examples of playfulness to be found in the Estonian literature. His literary 'worlds' are made up of facts that, however familiar to the Estonian reader, appear in a somewhat strange form. By playing with our common knowledge of the national history and culture, Kivirähk creates a strange and grotesque world, where the traditional categories, hierarchies and beliefs have ceased to work and where everything is in constant movement, incessant metamorphosis, a perpetual state of reform and revaluation. This is post modernist national literature with its irony, parody and grotesque deformations typically serving to criticise as well as re-actualise certain values essential from the viewpoints of national identity and national culture.
