How author Ričardas Gavelis sang the hellish laughter of socialism

It takes an unusual perspective to capture the agony of the late Soviet years in literature. Ričardas Gavelis – a Lithuanian author who died in 2002 at the age of just 52 – assigned himself the status of a keeper of secrets. The manuscript of his novel Vilnius Poker He, a qualified physicist who suffered from insomnia, kept it carefully hidden from the Soviet authorities. Today the work is considered a book of the century in Lithuania.