Sven Mikser

Sven Mikser (1973) is an Estonian politician and writer. He was elected into the Estonian Parliament, the Riigikogu before he had turned 30, and since then, he has served five different terms, working as the defence minister and foreign minister, leading the Estonian Social Democratic Party between 2010 and 2015 and becoming a member of the European Parliament in 2019. In addition to his brilliant political career, it was quite a surprise when it turned out that Mikser’s debut novel Vareda won the 2023 novel competition organised by the Estonian Writers’ Union. The novel is set in a pivotal moment in Estonia’s history, in 1991, when the Berlin Wall is falling somewhere, and the Soviet Union is falling apart a bit closer to home. 16-year-old Johannes, who wants to become an artist, goes to housesit a school building in an old manor house peacefully lounging in a village named Vareda, in the middle of nowhere. The novel describes the intellectual explorations of a young person, his relations with his mother and father, the first tentative steps in love, the peculiar power of art, and saying goodbye to the older generation – everything one would expect from a mature, poetic, slightly nostalgic young adult novel about a particular era and place. Sven Mikser will talk to Urmas Vadi.