The latest addition to my website is Kai Aareleid‘s Linnade põletamine (Burning Cities). The book goes from 19141 to 2013 and essentially follows Tiina and those she is in contact with. We meet her mother, Liise, in her wedding dress in the rain, as her husband has hurried off to join up. She is rescued by Peeter Ungar, whom she will meet after the war, when her husband has died. Liise and Peeter will marry and Tiina will be their only child. The marriage is not happy. Peeter drinks and gambles. Tiina cannot seem to make contact with her parents and only later will she have a friend – a Russian. Tiina and others look back to the past that does not really seem to help them either. In the end Tiina and the other key characters seem lost souls – they have an emptiness as Aareleid has stated, which they cannot fill. It is a sad but well told story.