Anna Sakse

(married name Abzalone). Born Jan. 3 (16), 1905, in Valka District, now Gulbene Raion. Soviet Latvian writer. People’s Writer of the Latvian SSR (1965).

From 1925 to 1927, Sakse attended the Latvian University in Riga. She began publishing her works in 1925. In 1934 she joined an illegal association of revolutionary writers, artists, and journalists. In 1940 she worked for the newspaper Cīņa. Her novel The Laboring Tribe (1941; Russian translation, 1953) told of the path traveled by the Latvian peasants to the Revolution of 1905–07. Her novel Up the Mountain (1948; State Prize of the USSR, 1949) described the struggle for the socialist reorganization of a Latvian village. She depicted the life of intellectuals in bourgeois Latvia in her two-part novel Sparks in the Night (1951–57; Russian translation, 1958; State Prize of the Latvian SSR, 1959). Sakse also wrote short stories, children’s books, and the fairy-tale collections The King of Spades (1962; Russian translation, 1966) and Fairy Tales About Flowers (1966; Russian translation, 1969). Her works have been translated into many languages.

Sakse was a deputy to the third and fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. She has been awarded the Order of the October Revolution, three other orders, and various medals