Armin Kõomägi and Tauno Vahter

Armin Kõomägi (1969) is an Estonian entrepreneur and writer. Kõomägi made a sudden splash in Estonian literature with his debut, the absurd-tinged short story Anonüümsed logistikud, also included in the collection of short stories Amatöör (2005), which talks about men trying to rationally measure their every activity, including beer drinking and pissing. It won the Tuglas Short Story Award in 2006. This powerful debut has been followed by a notable literary journey – for example, Kõomäe’s novel Lui Vutoon (2016), a post-apocalyptic absurdist story set in a shopping centre that gradually turns into a purgatory, won the Estonian Writers’ Union’s novel competition. Kõomägi has created a unique fictional world of his own, with ingredients such as absurd humour, occasionally obscene language, a keen social nerve that includes witty swipes at consumer culture and existentialist questions peeking out from behind this feast. Last year, Kõomäe published his third novel Taevas, a (mental) journey balancing between dreams and the waking world, an odyssey of a modern international man that takes him from one international airport to another, and creates an atmosphere that is recognisably modern and surreal in equal measure.

Tauno Vahter (1978) is an Estonian writer, publisher, translator and quizzer who leads the prestigious Tänapäev publishing house. Vahter, who has been publishing and mainly translating Finnish literature for years, turned to writing fiction at a relatively old age, in the early 2020s, when he published a collection of short stories entitled Pikaajaline kokkusaamine (2020). This has been followed by novels, often marked by extraordinary, sometimes even extreme, life destinies, including the prototype of the title character of Vahter’s first novel, Madis Jeffersoni 11 põgenemist (2021), a man named Johannes Lapmann, who repeatedly tried to escape the Soviet Union. Vahter’s erudition and absurdist sense of humor also come together in his latest work, his third novel Elevandi üksildus (2024). As his previous works, the novel stands out with its colourful characters: Aliide, whose character is based on the life of Alviine Pedriks, who was considered the heaviest woman in Estonia in the 1930s, and Ralf Vessenberg, a reclusive financier, who develops a perfectly understandable desire to acquire a personal elephant.