The Bed with the Golden Leg • Zigmunds Skujins

When I first came across The Bed with the Golden Leg in the seasonal preview, my interest was immediately piqued. That’s of course because it appeared in the Mare Klassiker program—and so far every book in that series has been a very special reading pleasure. A book by a Latvian author that tells a family’s story across many generations is certainly out of the ordinary. Is it truly an opulent family saga? Is it worthy of standing among the first-rate classics and their great authors in this series? Read on—I’ll have to say a few things here to find that out.

The novel centers on the Vējagals family. Skaidrīte, a younger scion of this lineage that stretches back many generations, begins researching and gathering all the information about her ancestors. The book opens with a few lines about her—she’s the one whose research underpins the chapters that follow. Then we head straight into the forebears of long ago, and starting from the first known Vējagals—who lived in the latter half of the 19th century—Skujiņš tells the family’s story up to roughly the 1980s. Over many decades he recounts the fortunes of individual family members and ties them to the history of Latvia: from an agrarian society discovering seafaring, through two world wars in which Latvia became a battleground between German troops and the Soviets, and on into the postwar era.

I found Skujiņš’s way of telling this story highly unusual—novel, and anything but conventional. He begins with the earliest Vējagals, and we learn about Noass, a successful seafarer, and his brother Augusts, a devoted farmer who loved his craft. The family’s saga is told through its individual members: his spotlight glides from one figure to the next, brings each into focus in turn, swings back to examine a Vējagals more closely, returns again to another, dwells on certain events in detail only to leave that phase of life behind and suddenly move through time at a brisker pace. That’s something that can only work in literature—on film it would be utterly confusing, but in a novel it functions beautifully. Above all, it keeps things interesting for the reader, because we stop precisely at those stations in the family members’ lives that are compelling to read. At the same time, by accelerating time he links characters and experiences into a coherent story, all while loosely preserving chronological order.

He portrays the lives of the family members in a way that initially feels almost like reportage—but it isn’t dry at all. We steadily get a detailed view into the figures’ feelings and thoughts, and in certain episodes you genuinely empathize with them. Yet a certain distance remains, created by a retrospective narrative voice that sometimes slows down and zooms in, then suddenly picks up speed and skims across years as if they were merely moments. The perspective is a limited omniscience that knows the key stations but not every detail, so gaps remain. It reads exactly as if someone had reconstructed these things from records, diaries, and oral accounts—more detail in some places, larger leaps elsewhere where the trail is thin. For me, this was an unusual way to write and tell a story, and it made the book fascinating from page one. At the same time, that distance kept me from feeling with the characters as intensely as in other novels—an emotional drawback, at least for me.

What’s remarkable is the superb characterization of the various family members—Skujiņš handles this masterfully. He doesn’t overdo the detail; he sketches the characters primarily through their life paths and key episodes. He describes traits with great precision and gives them individual features that lend a great deal of authenticity. I found Augusts, Paulis, and Leontīne especially successful. Leontīne in particular gets a lot of space—her entire life is traced across the book—and she is among the finest character studies here. What I really liked is how the many individuals form a mosaic that portrays the family as a whole. The tendencies that cling to all the Vējagals show up in each member, giving the entire family its distinctive stamp.

“No, what truly kept him from the voyage was the Vējagals character—a defiance turned against oneself, a refusal to leave something unfinished. One might call it ambition or pride.” (p. 167)

The quote captures it well, though not completely. “Defiance” is the right word—not excessive ambition or overweening pride, not stubbornness. It’s something subtler, sometimes only a nuance, which makes it feel realistic. Individual temperaments, innate talents, and personal inclinations send them off on very different life paths, and yet they all carry a certain defiance within them; each, in his or her way, takes fate into their own hands, faces the world, and gets on with it. This familial trait shows up in all of them, often conveyed only subliminally. I found that very effective—it makes this literary construction of a family feel very true to life.

Another quality that makes the book distinctive is how it reads almost like a collection of stories. The characters’ lives are so varied that, with each shift to another family member, it feels as if a new story begins—though the transitions are so fluid that you never feel the jolt of a completely new tale. That carried me through the book, producing the same reading flow I get with a story collection, where the next enticing piece beckons and you hardly want to put the book down. While the storytelling certainly has entertainment value, it remains unruffled, free of sentimentality and narrative excess, and feels very true to life—especially amid the upheavals of the two world wars. In all, the range is broad: a successful seafarer; farmers; a revolutionary with a restless life; a librarian with a highly idiosyncratic love story. All share the will to shape and change the world. At times we also get side anecdotes on the great wheel of time—like the struggle over the old cemetery in Zunte, or a love affair with a disreputable captain who slips past Prohibition in nocturnal operations. This variety of stories, anecdotes, and incidents kept my attention and interest consistently high.

I liked Skujiņš’s sentences a lot. They’re neither too plain nor too expansive, but have a pleasantly measured cadence. They fit the material perfectly and strike an excellent balance between precision and figurative color. Not a sprawling Balzac, not a terse Hemingway—something in between: sometimes with a Balzacian aphorism on the lips, with wonderfully vivid turns of phrase, but then quickly returning to a concise, matter-of-fact style.

“Years do not make a lover more reasonable. It’s a mistake to believe that experience and knowledge let one swim in love without getting one’s hair wet.” (p. 209)

Noteworthy, too, is how Skujiņš has woven his novel into Latvian history. You infer the timeline—world wars, German occupation, incorporation into the Soviet Union, and the postwar years—only loosely from descriptions and the characters’ circumstances. Sometimes time jumps a bit forward or back, especially when the perspective shifts from one family member to another. While reading, you feel how firmly the background is anchored in Latvian history—like a framework that influences and steers the characters’ lives, since they must submit to the times. Readers familiar with Latvia and the Baltic region will recognize much that resonates with other sources. The basis lies in the author’s own life: reading Skujiņš’s biography reveals parallels to his characters, and—as the afterword explains—many anecdotes and details are adapted from real events.

Regarding Latvian history, I found the section about Marta especially compelling: how she experienced Latvia’s entry into the Soviet Union; how simple people were suddenly elevated into senior positions while those who had held roles under the old order—and were not “on line”—were removed; and then the war between the USSR and Germany fought on Latvian soil, and how Marta lived through it. In her, too, the Vējagals essence emerges clearly—she’s driven by brisk pragmatism and a desire to return to her old home.

The primary setting is the fictional coastal town of Zunte, which likely corresponds to Dunte on the Gulf of Riga. Some critics, however, think Ainaži—today a village on the Estonian border—served as the model. In the 19th century, Latvian seafaring experienced its golden age, and it recurs frequently at the beginning of the book. In that sense, the novel fits the Mare series very well—though as the story progresses, the sea recedes in importance. Of all the Mare books, this one brings, in my view, the least of that special maritime mood—without making it any less worth reading.

The author was entirely unknown to me beforehand. Zigmunds Skujiņš was born in Riga in 1926 and died in March 2022 at a great age. His life reads as quite adventurous: he traveled the world; during the German occupation he was conscripted and had to serve as an anti-aircraft helper, was wounded, and ended up in a hospital in Lower Saxony. In 1945 he was to be taken home by train, which in fact was to bring him to a labor camp in the eastern USSR. In Latvia he leapt from the moving train and thus escaped deportation. Skujiņš worked as a journalist and wrote numerous stories and novels, later also plays, screenplays, and essays. His books were very successful, and he received many national and international awards.

“Because the truth can have a hundred arms and a hundred legs, and yet, like a person, it cannot climb two trees at the same time.” (p. 314)

Early on, Skujiņš’s work was ideologically aligned with socialism, but over the years it broke away from that, and by the late 1980s he was one of the leading figures in Latvia’s independence movement. Historically, Latvia was ruled by foreign powers for centuries and long populated primarily by serfs. The identity of the Latvian nation has been a central topic over the past hundred years—something this book makes very clear. In view of today’s global conflicts, literature like this feels extremely important: it shows how significant cultural identity is, the value that springs from it, and how wrong it is to undermine it. This reissue arrives at just the right time to remind us of that.

The book’s design is simply wonderful—I have to emphasize that again. I love the rich illustration on the slipcase and the beautifully colorful printed cloth binding; for me it’s one of the most attractive volumes in the Mare Klassiker series. I may have said that before about others, but this time the design takes some risks—and it’s a bull’s-eye. The suggested Vējagals house, the fields, and the sea above them capture precisely what defines the Vējagals—seafarers, deeply tied to agriculture and nature, and all connected to the house affectionately called “The Fortress.” The bright, cheerful colors also fit perfectly: despite the epochal crises, the book maintains a consistently positive, life-affirming undertone. The typography mirrors the family’s “chaos,” the individualism of each character, which was always allowed to unfold. The paper is once again characteristically soft and high-quality, and I kept catching myself running my fingers over it. As with the other classics, there’s a sewn binding—everything perfect, the usual quality you expect from the series.

There’s an extensive appendix again this time, though for me the notes were too few. I would have liked more background during the reading—often I missed historical context because I’m not particularly familiar with Latvian history. There is a chronology of Latvian history at the end—especially in relation to the Soviet Union—but somehow I didn’t find it very helpful; it felt unclear. The afterword, on the other hand, is excellent: very informative, it recounts Skujiņš’s life and shows how Latvian literature developed from the culture of freed peasants. You’ll find information there that gives you a better understanding of what you’ve just read—exactly what an afterword should do.

Conclusion: With this unconventional book, Mare has rediscovered a very readable family story and reissued it perfectly. Latvian author Zigmunds Skujiņš portrays a Latvian family in The Bed with the Golden Leg by vividly characterizing the many compelling life paths of its members and weaving them together with Latvia’s turbulent history from the late 19th century to the 1980s. Like a collection of stories, you drift through different lives, experience the existence of entire generations, and are treated to prose that’s finely balanced. For me, the book felt fresh and new—both in the way its people are portrayed and in Latvia as a geographical, social, and historical backdrop. The design is outstanding, and it’s remarkable how its details reflect the book’s content, capturing it on a second level. A book I can recommend wholeheartedly—for both its substance and its looks.

Book information: The Bed with the Golden Leg • Zigmunds Skujiņš • mare Verlag • 607 pages • ISBN 9783866486584