Cold East (2019)

On the morning of his 29th birthday, Lithuanian Stasys Šaltoka wakes up next to a woman he doesn’t know, in his own bed, in New York, realizing that his days look good only through Instagram filters.

Ferocious anxiety lurks under the photogenic everyday surface, and the question WHY? keeps poking him in the back. Stasys decides to change lanes and moves to Southeast Asia. New friends, an occasional wan tan mee, phad thai or mashed potatoes, all drowning in whiskey and sarcasm, leads him to making documentaries about the third world. Yet there is still just silence inside him.

Cold East is the second novel by Gabija Grušaitė, telling the story of today through an inner transformation lens of thirty-year-olds, through the search of profound happiness or meaning while dancing around the surfaces of life, and through human ties.

— Gabija Grušaitė’s novel exploded like a bomb on the Lithuanian literary scene, dragging us willy-nilly into the 21st century. Violeta Kelertas, literary critic