A few years ago, a study conducted by US and Australian scholars found that Estonians have almost twice as many books at home as the world’s average. This is not surprising: for about 50 years, literature was our surrogate homeland, because the country itself was under Soviet occupation and our language and culture under constant threat. Therefore, new novels by Estonian writers were published in print runs of 25-30 000 and yet quickly sold out, even though the number of the speakers of Estonian was around just one million people. Reading was a form of resistance.
