Luts, Oskar

Born Dec. 26, 1886 (Jan. 7, 1887), in the volost (small rural district) of Kaarepere, present-day Jōgeva Raion; died Mar. 23, 1953, in Tartu. Soviet Estonian writer. People’s Writer of the Estonian SSR (1945). Son of an artisan.

Luts fought in World War I. His first novella, Spring (parts 1-2, 1912-13), brought Luts wide renown. In it the life of village schoolboys was depicted masterfully and with lavish humor, and the name of the story’s hero, Toots, became a household word in Estonia. The novellas Summer (parts 1-2, 1918-19), Toots’ Wedding (1921), and Everyday Life (1924) were sequels to Spring.

In bourgeois Estonia, Luts belonged to the camp of progressive democratic literature. His protagonists are people who live on the city’s outskirts, hard-working people for whose fate the writer has unfailing sympathy. Such characters are found in the novellas The Life of Andres (1923) and The Pupil Valter (1927), among others. Life on the city’s outskirts is depicted in a tragicomic, grotesque manner in the novellas In the Backyards (1933) and A Quiet Corner (1934). Luts also wrote a 13-volume series of reminiscences, including Old Paths (1930) and Winter Roads (1931). In plays such as A Head of Cabbage and Paunvere (both 1913), Luts exposed the greed and intellectual poverty of wealthy people living in the countryside. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.