The legendary Estonian marshlands, fertile ground for mangroves and folklore, are the strangely comforting background to Lilli Luuk’s Night Mother (Ööema), shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), where they serve as a wartime refuge, childhood landscape, and the keeper of a family secret buried for half a century.The bog, Luuk said in a conversation with indianexpress.com, “has historically always given shelter to people in Estonia, for centuries, in different wars.”Luuk grew up in central Estonia, where bogs are everywhere, and by her estimate, make up around 20 per cent of the country’s landscape. “It is a very magical place. You can always find silence there, but so many different animals and birds live there. It’s a very beautiful place.”“After the Second World War, Estonian villages were almost empty of men,” she said. “They were killed at war or sent to the gulag, and some men fled into the forests and into the bogs to find shelter from the occupation and Russian terror.”Luuk, an art historian turned full-time writer, read at the Long Night of Literatures at Sunder Nursery on October 23, representing Estonia alongside the EU Delegation. Night Mother was Estonia’s entry on the 2026 shortlist of the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), which spotlights emerging fiction writers from the 41 countries taking part in the EU’s Creative Europe programme.In May, Czech author Dora Kaprálová won the Grand Prix, but all 14 shortlisted authors receive translation support and continue to be promoted at literary events beyond their borders, which is what brought Luuk to Delhi.‘I’m exploring the silence’In Night Mother, the family’s women’s secrets, kept for 50 years, emerge when a milk churn holding a parachute blouse is discovered alongside a diary of photographs.Story continues below this ad“Stories that are difficult to remember are also stories that are difficult to tell,” Luuk says. “One of a writer’s tasks is to give a voice to those people who cannot speak, or don’t want to speak, about things that are too hard for them. As a writer, I think I am exploring the silence.”Writing about what happened to people, she believes, “can bring some relief. It could help.”Told through the eyes of a young woman who lost her brother, her first novel, My Brother’s Body (2022), is also set at the end of the Second World War. Both are serious books about difficult times, Luuk said, but she wants them to carry hope too.“Life goes on, and there is always a future. There are always people who can bring hope to other people’s lives, and in my books, there always are such people.”Story continues below this adAn art historian’s eye, and a room of her ownLuuk, whose debut won Estonia’s Friedebert Tuglas Award for short stories in 2018, studied and taught art history before turning to fiction. “When you look at art, you are always looking at the smallest details. When I write, I tend to describe people and places in detail, and it helps me as a writer.”Virginia Woolf’s idea that women need a room of their own inspired Lilli Luuk, whose given name is Kristina Tamm (born Kristina Valdru), to write under a pen name. “I have done different things. I am a mother, and it all took so much place and time in my life,” she said. “When I use my writer’s name, this is my room for writing.”She admitted she’d rather write than perform on social media, but readers matter. “I don’t want to write only for myself. I want to share it, so sometimes I have to go out and meet the readers or post something on Instagram. There is no other way.”First impressions of IndiaTwo days into her first visit, Luuk said she felt “so welcomed.” Among Indian writers, she named Arundhati Roy, whose Booker-winning The God of Small Things she loved. “People are so warm, and it seems to me they all love books,” she said.Story continues below this ad“To be here as a European Union Prize for Literature nominee, and as an Estonian writer, is a great honour,” she says.