| The Cavemen Chronicle | |
| Author: | Mihkel Mutt |
| Country: | Estonian literature |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Publisher: | Fabian Dalkey Archive Press (2015) |
| Pub Date: | 2012 |
| Media Type: | Print (paperback) |
| Pages: | 401 |
| Awards: | Virumaa Literature Prize |
| Isbn: | 978-1-56478-708-8 |
The Cavemen Chronicle (Estonian title Kooparahvas läheb ajalukku) is a 2012 historical/comic novel by Estonian author Mihkel Mutt. An English language translation by Adam Cullen was published in 2015. The novel centers on a group of writers, musicians, and scholars in Estonia before, during, and after that nation's independence from the Soviet Union. The title refers to The Cave, a semi-exclusive underground bar in Tallinn where the principal characters gather to drink and debate over the course of several decades.
"The Cavemen Chronicle" explores recent Estonian history, from the era of Soviet repression to Estonian independence and beyond, through the eyes of a group of intellectuals whose stories intersect and diverge and whose lives, in the narrator's words, "expressed the age."
The novel is divided into four main chronological sections:
Major characters include:
By the end of the novel, several characters have died and others still struggle to adapt to a world where their Soviet-era identities have been subsumed by a new state, a market economy, and constant technological change. As Mutt stated in a 2018 interview:
"Back in the Soviet era everyone knew who you were, they knew your face. It was an age with no mass media, and to be a writer was to be a celebrity in an age of no celebrity. ... The numbers for some of the books I published in the 1980s were astonishing—40,000 copies sold, a million people or more reading my work. But I'm still suspicious of these numbers, which seemed unlikely then and, frankly, impossible to conceive of today."[1]
"The Cavemen Chronicle" is set firmly within the historical context of the last half-century in Estonia, but major events of the period are often mentioned briefly, if at all.
One exception is the Estonian Song Festival[2] of September 1988 (the novel places the event in August), which comprises much of the third section of the book. The event, organized by opponents of the Soviet occupation, attracted more than 100,000 people to the Song Festival Grounds outside Tallinn, where traditional and patriotic Estonian songs were performed in defiance of Soviet prohibitions. The moment is considered one of the landmarks of civil disobedience during the Baltics uprising. In the novel, however, the event is used in part for comedic effect, as the principal characters spend several pages debating whether to go to the festival grounds and perhaps witness history in the making, or alternatively to stay away, continue drinking, and merely lie to everyone later by claiming they had, in fact, been at the event.
Some reviews have suggested that Mutt's novel is highly autobiographical and that many of the characters are based on real-life individuals. At least one, Estonian author and theater director Mati Unt, appears as himself.[3]
The Cave, the tavern around which most of the book's plot revolves, is based on an actual underground nightclub in Tallinn, the KuKu Club.[4] [5]
"The Cavemen Chronicle" won the Virumaa Literature Prize for the best historical novel in 2013.[6]