Imbi Paju

Imbi Paju [writer, documentary filmmaker and essayist]

“The more I read and write, the better I can see and perceive.”

Who is Imbi Paju?

Imbi Paju is a writer, essayist, and filmmaker. She has studied cultural studies, classical singing, and Finnish language and social sciences at the University of Helsinki.

She began writing in 1991, when Estonia regained its independence and freedom of speech was restored. Before that, she studied classical singing and worked as a choral soloist in an opera choir. After Estonia gained its freedom following the Singing Revolution, Imbi Paju left singing behind and started writing and making documentary films.

Books

No Man Is an Island: Three Essays on the Gulag Archipelago

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Book reviews

Anne Applebaum

author of Gulag: A History (2003), on the Soviet prison camp system, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.

“By describing the fate of her mother – arrested, imprisoned, deported to the Gulag as a young woman – Imbi Paju has, in effect, told the story of an entire nation. Widely admired in her native Estonia and elsewhere, Memories Denied could bring that country’s history alive for many others too.”

Edward Lucas

author of The New Cold War (2008)

"Imbi Paju’s book opens doors into dark rooms. Let them flood with sunlight. And let others follow the same example."

"Memories Denied resonates powerfully with the works of renowned intellectuals and writers, such as Still Alive, the memoirs of Holocaust survivor Ruth Kluger, or Crabwalk, the novel by Günther Grass."

Thomas Salumets,

Assoc. Prof. Emeritus, University of British Columbia, 2019

"The fact that the journalists of Finland’s largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat selected the compilation by Oksanen and Paju as the most noteworthy informative work of 2009 is significant."

Heili Sibrits,

Jan. 20, 2010 Postimees Estonian newspaper

"Literary Clinic has a therapeutic effect, while validating, reminding us of and predicting our belonging to the Western humanitarian space. Still now, and in the future."

EERIK-NIILES KROSS,

historian, author, diplomat and politician

"We can consider one of the greatest advantages of this book to be that it is meant for the whole family, not only for children. It allows a reading child to compare their own childhood with that of previous generations, but also – most important of all – to find common ground. It is this forging of collective ties of memory through common experience and the telling of common stories that seems to be one of the main goals of this book."

Jaanika Palm,

Researcher of children’s literature

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First there was a photo of my mother

When I look at the picture of my mother, I see sadness. The photo was taken in 1955, about a year after she had been released from Stalin’s forced labor camp. Mother’s melancholic look brings the reality of that time into the present day.

bestseller

Memories Denied

During the Soviet occupation in the 1940s and 1950s, tens of thousands of Estonians were arrested and deported to Siberia. Among them were Imbi Paju’s mother and her twin sister. For those who grew up in this time of the terror, denial of memories was the only way to survive. Memories Denied emerged from Imbi Paju’s need to understand her mother’s experiences. The book has been published in Estonian, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, German, English, Hungarian, Romanian and Ukrainian.

Kirjastus Gallus

Apollo

Rahva Raamat