Toomas Nipernaadi

Toomas Nipernaadi is the eternal wanderer. Each spring he travels into the countryside, wandering from village to village. Wherever he turns up adventure and trouble ensue. He works as a rafter, impersonates a pastor, drains swampland and becomes the master of a farm. He is full of stories and tall tales and enchants the village girls he encounters who fall in love with his elusive will-of-the-wisp character before he is gone as suddenly as he arrived. There is both a fair-tale element and a darker side to Toomas Nipernaadi who is both the hero and the villain in his own story. First published in 1928 Toomas Nipernaadi remains one of the most popular books in Estonia. It has been widely translated and made into a successful film.

August Gailit (1891-1960) was a writer of exuberant imagination, a late neo-romanticist, whose entire output focuses on the external opposition of beauty and ugliness. His most influential work is Toomas Nipernaadi (1928). Toomas Nipernaadi has become both a classic figure and text in Estonia. A film adaptation entitled Nipernaadi and directed by Kaljo Kiisk was released in 1983. The novel is being translated into English for Dedalus by Eva & Jason Finch and will be published in April 2018. August Gailit's story Maiden of the North is featured in The Dedalus Book of Estonian literature. He emigrated to Sweden in 1944.