Description

Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is a UNESCO City of Literature, best known for its multilingual writing tradition and printing culture.

Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is a UNESCO City of Literature, best known for its multilingual writing tradition and printing culture.

By recounting the history of libraries and life stories of librarians during the Nazi German and Soviet Russian occupations of Lithuania, Laimonas Briedis shines the light on this Orphic spirit of a city.

Since its early days, the city has been a notable centre of Lithuanian, Jewish, Polish and Ruthenian (Belorussian and Ukrainian) book life, with both public and private libraries being key sites of national resistance and cultural self-determination.

Laimonas Briedis is a writer and scholar of history, literature and the geographical imagination of Lithuania. A native of Vilnius, he has lived for most of his life in Vancouver (Canada) where he completed a doctoral degree in cultural geography at the University of British Columbia. His creative output stretches from charting a GIS anchored digital map of the multilingual literature of Vilnius to examining the ramifications of being bi-local; placing questions related to belonging, migration, diaspora, translation, poetic vision and memory at the core of his work. The Economist describes Vilnius: City of Strangers as a “subtle and evocative book,” where “vanished civilizations and lost empires leave a city stalked by horror and steeped in wonder.”

A note about accessibility – Unfortunately, our Grade II* listed building is not currently fully accessible. We have a stair lift from the ground floor foyer to the first floor but are unable to install a through-floor lift due to the building’s historic status. Please email us on enquiries@theleedslibrary.org.uk if you have any questions around access, and we will do everything that we can to accommodate you.

The Leeds Library is committed to making its building and collections accessible to everyone in our current capital building works project The Next Chapter Project. To find out more, please visit the website HERE.