In memory of Ilmar Jaks, two-time winner of the Tuglas short story award

Jaan Undusk`s review of Ilmar Jaks` novel “No-Man`s Land”, published immediately prior to the August [1989] putsch, which includes a photo of Ilmar Jaks and Jaan Undusk in Paris, May 1990.

Ilmar Jaks (1923–2019) was one of the most remarkable Estonian prose writers of the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps he is the least well-known great prose innovator from the beat and hippie movement era. Stylistically he is a brilliant short story writer, though his central work constellated in the form of a novel, one of the most powerful achievements among literary texts in the Estonian language, No-Man`s Land. Notes on Siimon (1963).

To find one`s way into Jaks` works, a key word might be anarchism, a term which signals protest against the subjection of human existence to symbol systems; stigmatisation according to language, ideology, state and legal practices; labelling according to markers of race, nationality and social status; degrees, employment rankings, officially bestowed honours and awards, wedding rings and noserings.