36 Facts About Jaan Kross

Jaan Kross won the 1995 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Jaan Kross taught there as a lecturer until 1946, and again as professor of Artes Liberales in 1998.

In 1940, when Kross was 20, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the three Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; imprisoned and executed most of their governments.

Jaan Kross was first arrested by the Germans for six months in 1944 during the German occupation of Estonia, suspected of what was termed "nationalism"; that is, promoting Estonian independence.

Jaan Kross spent a total of eight years in this part of North Russia, six working in the mines at the Minlag labour camp in Inta, then doing easier jobs, plus two years still living as a deportee, but not in a labour camp.

At first, Jaan Kross wrote poetry, alluding to a number of contemporary phenomena under the guise of writing about historical figures.

Jaan Kross was by far the most translated and nationally and internationally best-known Estonian writer.

Jaan Kross received the honorary title of People's Writer of the Estonian SSR and the State Prize of the Estonian SSR.

Jaan Kross held several honorary doctorates and international decorations, including the highest Estonian order and one of the highest German orders.

In 1990 Jaan Kross won the Amnesty International Golden Flame Prize.

Jaan Kross won the 1995 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Jaan Kross was reportedly nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature during the early 1990s.

Nowadays, Jaan Kross' works are translated into English either directly from the Estonian, or via the Finnish version.

Jaan Kross knew German from quite an early age because friends of the family spoke it as their native language, and Jaan Kross' mother had a good command of it.

Jaan Kross's Russian was mainly learned while working as a slave labourer in the gulag.

Jaan Kross had some knowledge of Swedish and translated a crime novel by Christian Steen from Swedish.

Jaan Kross translated works by Pierre-Jean de Beranger, Honore de Balzac, and Paul Eluard from French, Bertolt Brecht and Rolf Hochhuth from German, Ivan Goncharov and David Samoilov from Russian, and Alice in Wonderland, Macbeth, and Othello from English.

The reader will note that every protagonist or narrator, from Timotheus von Bock in The Czar's Madman to Jaan Kross' two alter egos, Jaak Sirkel and Peeter Mirk in the semi-autobiographical novels, indulges in this.

Jaan Kross was always very skilful at always remaining just within the bounds of what the Soviet authorities could accept.

Jaan Kross enjoyed playing with the identities of people who have the same, or nearly the same, name.

When Jaan Kross was already in his late 70s he gave a series of lectures at Tartu University explaining certain aspects of his novels, not least the roman a clef dimension, given the fact that quite a few of his characters are based on real-life people, both in the truly historical novels and the semi-autobiographical ones.

Jaan Kross's life started quietly enough, but after describing quite innocuous things such as the summer house during his childhood and his schooldays, Kross moves on to the first Soviet occupation of Estonia, his successful attempt to avoid being drafted for the Waffen-SS during the Nazi German occupation, and a long section covering his experiences of prison and the labour camps.

Jaan Kross nevertheless uses his remaining hand to work wonders when polishing high-quality lenses and mirrors for astronomical telescopes.

Jaan Kross attends a prestigious private school, but when his speculator father abandons him and his mother the money runs out.

Jaan Kross then helps his mother run a laundry to make ends meet.

Jaan Kross is even offered a chance to escape abroad by going to study at the Vatican, but stays in Estonia.

Jaan Kross appears as something of a rough diamond throughout the books.

Jaan Kross is, in 1879, painting a fresco for a church in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

The Wikman Boys Jaan Kross' alter ego Jaak Sirkel will soon matriculate from school in the mid-1930s.

Jaan Kross finds a job on an archaeological dig near the main bastion in central Tallinn.

Jaan Kross is accused of writing certain things during the one-year Soviet occupation the previous year.

Mesmer's Circle Another novel involving Jaan Kross' alter ego, Jaak Sirkel, who is by now a first-year student at Tartu University.

Jaan Kross died in Tallinn, at the age of 87, on 27 December 2007.

Jaan Kross was survived by his wife, children's author and poet Ellen Niit, and four children.

Between 1968 and 1995, Jaan Kross published six small volumes of essays and speeches, a total of about 1,200 small-format pages.

Salokannel is the Finnish translator of several of Kross's key works His Kross biography is entitled simply Jaan Kross and has not yet appeared in any other language except Finnish and Estonian.