Indrek: Volume II of the TRUTH AND JUSTICE pentalogy

This second volume of A.H. Tammsaare's monumental pentalogy portrays the education of Indrek who emerges here as the protagonist and will remain so throughout the next three volumes.This is a story of moving to the polyglot city and abandoning the countryside which at that time was the heartland of the Estonian language.This new environment is a vortex of prejudices and national rivalries nevertheless held together in practice by a strange and very human tolerance.Here Tammsaare writes with his trademark wit and deep understanding of human nature, and we find ourselves in the company of a vast gallery of larger-than-life characters who jostle, scheme and argue over both trivialities and the great issues of the human condition.They may do the latter out of their own intellectual narcissism or simply for the joy of debate, but the ensuing dialogues rival those of the great Russian novelists.The boarding school is as dysfunctional as any Dickensian one, but it is a great deal more benevol