Prisikėlimas
1968
Introduction
Prisikėlimas (Resurrection) is a 1968 Lithuanian-language novel by Alė Rūta, one of the most prolific and widely read Lithuanian diaspora fiction writers of the postwar era, published by the prestigious Nida Press in London as the 68th volume of the Nidos Knygų Klubas book club series. Written in an intimate first-person stream-of-consciousness register, the novel explores themes of illness, memory, longing for homeland, artistic identity, and the inner life of a Lithuanian exile. As a Nida Press imprint, it represents the backbone of Lithuanian literary culture sustained in the West during Soviet occupation of Lithuania.
Community and publication context
Community and publication setting
Context and significance
Significance
Alė Rūta (pen name of Julija Švabaitė-Gylienė, 1910–2008) was among the most prolific Lithuanian diaspora novelists, and Nida Press was the foremost Lithuanian literary publishing house operating in the West during the Soviet occupation period. This volume, as Nidos Knygų Klubo Leidinys Nr. 68, represents a well-documented point in a systematic effort to maintain a living Lithuanian literary culture outside Soviet-controlled Lithuania. The novel's themes—exile, illness, artistic longing, and the irretrievable homeland—are characteristic of the postwar Lithuanian diaspora literary imagination, and the work would have reached readers across multiple continents through the book club subscription network.
For the Lithuanian diaspora community, novels like Prisikėlimas were not merely entertainment but acts of cultural continuity: reading and circulating Lithuanian literary fiction in the original language maintained linguistic fluency, emotional connection to Lithuania, and a sense of shared identity across scattered communities. The Žiburio archive's custody of this volume reflects the role of Lithuanian heritage schools and community organizations as repositories of the diaspora's self-sustaining literary ecosystem.
How this record carried memory
Lithuanian-language fiction published by Nida Press in London and distributed internationally through the Nidos Knygų Klubas book club, sustaining a Lithuanian literary readership in the diaspora during Soviet occupation of the homeland.
Record connections
People, places, and institutions linked in the catalog
