August Gailit was an Estonian

Estonians

Estonians are a Finnic people closely related to the Finns and inhabiting, primarily, the country of Estonia. They speak a Finnic language known as Estonian...

 writer.

Life

Georg August Gailit was born in Sangaste Parish, Valgamaa, Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

, the son of a carpenter and grew up on a farm in Laatre (currently Tolle). From 1899 he attended schools in the parish and the town of Valga from 1905, then from 1907 a municipal school in Tartu

Tartu

Tartu is the second largest city of Estonia. In contrast to Estonia's political and financial capital Tallinn, Tartu is often considered the intellectual and cultural hub, especially since it is home to Estonia's oldest and most renowned university. Situated 186 km southeast of Tallinn, the...

. From 1911 until 1914 he worked as a journalist in today's Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

 and Estonia in 1916 until 1918. In the Estonian War of Independence he participated as a war correspondent.
From 1922 until 1924 August Gailit lived in Germany, France and Italy. After that he worked as a freelance writer in Tartu and from 1934 in Tallinn

Tallinn

Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

. From 1932 until 1934 he was the director of the Theater Vanemuine

Vanemuine

Vanemuine, a literal translation from is a theatre in Tartu, Estonia. It is the first Estonian language theatre, founded as the Vanemuine Society on June 24, 1865 following the idea of Johann Voldemar Jannsen. In 1869 Vanemuine Society organised the first song festival in Estonia...

 in Tartu.
In 1932 August Gailit married to actress Elvi Nanda (1898-1981) and his daughter Aili-Viktooria was born in 1933.
With the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Gailit fled with his family in September 1944 to Sweden, where he worked as a writer. He died in Örebro

Örebro

-Sites of interest:Örebro's old town Wadköping is located on the banks of Svartån . It contains many 18th and 19th century wooden houses, along with museums and exhibitions....

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

.

Literary career

In 1917 August, Gailit along with some other writers and poets, founded a literary group called "Siuru

Siuru

The Siuru literary movement, named after a fire-bird in Finno-Ugrian mythology, was founded in 1917 in Estonia. It was an expressionistic and neo-romantic movement that ran counter to the Young Estonia formalist tradition.-Members:...

" with which their erotic poems caused some scandal. The early prose of Gailit also contained erotic content and satire. Until the middle of the 1920s Gailit was strongly influenced by neo-romanticism. Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler

Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...

 and Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....

 also exerted great influence in his work.
His famous novel Toomas Nipernaadi (which was made into a movie in 1983) describes the romantic and adventurous life of a vagabond.
Some of his novels covered political issues such as the novel Isade maa (1935) which addressed the subject of the Estonian 1918-20 war of independence. Gailit's novel Ule rahutu vee (published in 1951 in Gothenburg

Gothenburg

Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

) concerns the tragic event of having to leave ones homeland.

Selected works

• KIU päike läheb looja (tale, 1910)
• Saatana Karussell (collection of novels, 1917)
• Muinasmaa (novel, 1918)
• Klounid ja faunid (Serial, 1919)
• Rändavad rüütlid (collection of novels, 1919)
• August Gailiti Surm (collection of novels, 1919)
• Purpurne Surm (novel, 1924)
• Idioot (collection of novels, 1924)
• Vastu hommikut (collection of novels, 1926)
• Aja grimassid (Serial, 1926)
• Ristisõitjad (collection of novels, 1927)
• Toomas Nipernaadi
  Toomas Nipernaadi
  Toomas Nipernaadi is an influential 1928 Estonian novel by August Gailit, as well as the name of the novel's main protagonist.- Character :The character is an archetypical traveller; a vagabond...
  
  (novel, 1928)
• Isade maa (novel, 1935)
• Meri Karger (novel, 1958)
• EKKE Moor (novel, 1941)
• Leegitsev Sudan (novel, 1945)
• Ule rahutu vee (novel, 1951)
• Kas mäletad, mu arm? (prose, 3 volumes, 1951-1959)