Exercises

Exercises is a mixed genre of memoir, confession, journal and letters, written during a short period in the 1990s when the author, Tõnu Õnnepalu, served as the Estonian cultural representative in Paris.In these pages, Õnnepalu submits all his past commitments and feelings to merciless scrutiny. This elegiac piece contains many perceptive insights into cross-cultural resentment, snobbery, and self-deception. And the main topic of his writing is often the very writing itself, as the means of the construction of one's own identity.The narrator is sufficiently intelligent and clear-sighted enough to make his musings and reflections on culture, daily politics, and sexuality irresistibly--even vo­yeu­ristically--readable.