The Grosvalds

Kristīne Želve’s novel Grosvaldi (The Grosvalds) focuses on an important family in the history of Latvia and their life for almost a hundred years.

The Grosvalds are: lawyer Frīdrihs Grosvalds, the long-term head of the Riga Latvian Society, his wife Marija Grosvalde and their five children – Mērija Grīnberga, a Latvian folk costume populariser and ethnographer, diplomat Oļģerds Grosvalds, painter Jāzeps Grosvalds, foreign service employees Līna Grosvalde and Margarēta Grosvalde, and the grandchildren – museum specialist Mērija Grīnberga Jr. and mathematician Emanuels Grīnbergs.

The novel intertwines different times, places and languages, historical vocabulary with contemporary language, the charming lightness of Belle Époque with the harshness of the birth and death of the Latvian state, exuberant playfulness with painful seriousness, authentic letters and diaries of the Grosvalds with the author’s imagination, creating the world of the Grosvalds family and the era they were destined to live in.