Jonas Avyzius emerged from relative obscurity in the mid-twentieth century to become a central figure in the development of modern Lithuanian prose. Having first earned recognition as a short-story writer, Avyzius made his most important literary contribution with his panoramic novels of Lithuanian society that capture the essence of the human spirit in the struggle for survival against the inevitability of loss and the often harsh realities of change. Admittedly traditional in his use of language and diction, Avyzius nonetheless produced fiction of contemporary relevance that established him as a distinctive voice in twentieth-century Lithuanian literature.

Jonas Avyzius was born on 16 May 1922 in the village of Medginai (now in the area of Joniskis), which later provided him with an inexhaustible source of material for his fictional accounts of peasant life in the Lithuanian countryside. As a child, Avyzius dreamed of becoming a writer: "When I was eight, I...