Some Unfinished Business

“Some Unfinished Business is a powerful, moving, and page-turning examination of loyalty, betrayal, retribution and ultimately, love, written by an acclaimed author at the height of his powers.” — Gary Barwin, Governor General’s– and Giller-shortlisted author of Yiddish for Pirates and Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted

Is love more compelling than justice? A wife pleads for love. Her husband longs for revenge.

Gripping and evocative, Some Unfinished Business tells the story of a young man who is determined to prevail through anti-Soviet resistance in occupied Lithuania, imprisonment in the Gulag, and the icy hands of bureaucracy that attempt to thwart his love for a woman with a mysterious past — all while chasing the back of the man who dared him to dream in the first place.

At fourteen, Martin Averka met a teacher from the city who inspired him to seek out the wide world beyond his small village of Lyn Lake. Years later, having lived under the tyranny of an autocratic system populated by cowards and bullies and seeking revenge, he breaks into the Pažaislis Monastery Asylum to confront face-to-face the man from his youth who betrayed his friends and colleagues a decade before.

“Set in the relentless, menacing atmosphere of a Soviet Socialist Republic, Antanas Sileika’s novel grabs you by the arm and never lets go until the last moment. The story of the two men at the heart of this tale is profoundly human and universal as are betrayal and survival.”

“They say that history is written by the victor, but in this vivid and deeply empathetic novel, it is instead told by Martin, a one-time farmboy thrust into the dangerzone of the resistance as he searches for meaning and survival in difficult times. Antanas Sileika braids Martin’s remarkable story through the turbulent, ever-changing history of mid-20th century Lithuania as he confronts who he is, what he values and who he hopes to be. Some Unfinished Business is a powerful, moving, and page-turning examination of loyalty, betrayal, retribution and ultimately, love, written by an acclaimed author at the height of his powers.”