Memoirs of a Young Man

Memoirs of a Life Cut Short inveighs against the falseness of a system that slowly crushes everyone in its wake. We see the development of an ordinary person in Soviet conditions who in one way or another becomes part of a system that is almost impossible to escape from or change. In 14 letters from beyond the grave, Leonas Ciparis delineates his life from his earliest days up until his last; his rise from lowly beginnings to the upper echelons of the Communist Party, illustrating the nature of the new Soviet person. The novel brilliantly reveals aspects of Lithuanian society that are understood to have existed, but are rarely openly discussed, helping the reader to understand the effects of Soviet rule on the human psyche as perceived by Lithuanians living under it.