Kęstutis Navakas (1964) is one of the most visible Lithuanian poets. He grew up in Kaunas, which figures in his work as his beloved city, and he has been a very active participant in the city’s cultural life. Besides writing for the cultural media, Navakas opened his own bookshop, which was one of the first private initiatives to organise literary events. He has also worked for television as a book reviewer, and has translated quite a lot of poetry from German and English. His own writing is marked by a very playful attitude towards language. He debuted as a poet and has published five collections of poetry, but he later also started writing essays. His writing is elegant, playful, erotic, and full of joie de vivre, with slightly decadent overtones. For him, no word has a single fixed meaning; he associates freely, even phonetically, and frequently uses quotes and references to spice up his writing. ‘I am an adventurer’, he once said in an interview, perfectly characterising both his personality and his work.

Visi laiškai – žirafos (2012)

For one year Kęstutis Navakas and his real-life partner Akvilė Žilionytė wrote letters to each other, and published them in a cultural weekly. Put together in a book, the letters are proudly called ‘a novel’. This is not like any other novel you have seen before. It tells a story, several in fact, and most of them are absolutely real; but that is beside the point. It is first and foremost a stylistic literary experiment, pushing at the boundaries, and more often than not crossing into the surreal. The letters discuss everything, from everyday subjects to the most sophisticated matters, They contain plenty of cultural references and allusions, their impressions of films, paintings and books, and silly stories that happen at home or in the street. This funny and perceptive, but most of all surprising and unexpected book was immediately received with enthusiasm by critics and literary experts.