The Autumn Ball, a prize-winning novel by the Estonian writer Mati Unt, is an unusual one - it lacks a traditional plot, a hero and a conflict. Nevertheless, the account it offers of an autumn's events in the lives of six colourful characters - a mediocre poet, a conceited architect, a misanthropic barber, a pseudointellectional debauchee, an attractive divorcee and her inquisitive son - all at odds with their urban environment, is an exciting and binding one and has been given a favourable reception everywhere it has appeared in translation (Moscow, Helsinki, Stockholm, Budapest, Sofia). Although the scene has been laid in an environment defined to the last documentary detail, the author manages to tell a story which would ring equally true in similar surroundings anywhere. Of no less attraction is the passionless irony, grotesqueness and deliberate naivite that Unt applies to describe his characters and their actions.
Author
Mati Unt was an Estonian writer, essayist and theatre director. Unt's first novel, written at the age of 18 after having finished high school, was Hüvasti, kollane kass (Goodbye, Yellow Cat). This made him famous all over Estonia. He studied literature and journalism at Tartu University in Tartu, Estonia. After this precocious beginning‚ Unt arranged a wide call in the artistic and intellectual circles of Estonia as a writer of the fiction, plays, and criticism. His books The Moon Like the Outgoing Sun, The Debt (1964), On the Existence of life in space, and The Black Motorcyclist rocketed Unt to the top of the novelist world in Estonia. In addition, he served a purpose in bringing avantgarde theatre to post-Soviet Union Estonia. Unt was well known as a theatre director. In 1981, he became a director of the Youth Theatre in Tallinn. In 1979, his novel Autumn Ball (adapted to a movie in 2007 by Veiko Õunpuu) brought him international recognition. Other books include 1990s Notebook of a Donor and the 2001 play Graal!. Films based on Unt's works Tühirand and Sügisball have been created after his death. Mati Unt died in 2005. He is buried in the Metsakalmistu cemetery in Tallinn.
