Balys Sruoga was a well-known Lithuanian poet, dramatist, and literary critic. In 1943, he was deported to Stutthof concentration camp. Having returned from Stutthof, he wrote a fictional memoir book Forest of the Gods, to become not only a heart- stirring document but also one of the finest specimens of Lithuanian prose.

In 1941, 14-year-old Dalia and her family are deported from their native Lithuania to a labour camp in Siberia. As the strongest member of her family she submits to twelve hours a day of manual labour. At the age of 21, she escapes the gulag and returns to Lithuania.

One night fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother and young brother are hauled from their home by Soviet guards, thrown into cattle cars and sent away. They are being deported to Siberia. An unimaginable and harrowing journey has begun. Lina doesn't know if she'll ever see her father or her friends again. But she refuses to give up hope.

In ten of her best essay-stories, Giedra Radvilaviciute travels between the ridiculous and the sublime, the everyday and the extraordinary. In the place of plot, which the author claims to have had shot and buried with the proper honors, the reader finds a dense, subtly interwoven structure of memory and reality, banalities and fantasy, all served up with a good dollop of absurdity and humor.