Take a sheet of A4-sized paper. Cut out a strip lengthways, around three centimeters wide. Put down your scissors, pick up your glue stick, glue the end of one side and then the other, twist the paper without folding it and join the two pre-glued parts together. Now take an Asian man carrying an unwieldy suitcase, place him on the strip and tell him to walk all the way to the end.

     This is the world of Haïlji’s novel The Republic of Užupis: a fantastic story that takes the reader on an obsessive quest for memory.

     An Asian man steps off the plane at Vilnius airport. He receives a lukewarm welcome from the authorities: He is the only one forced to show his boarding card, or to be questioned by two immigration officers. “There is a simple reason for our interest, sir—you’re traveling without a return ticket.” “Well, yes,” replies Hal, the novel’s main character. “I don’t plan to stay in Vilnius. I’m heading for the Republic of Užupis.”

     There is indeed in Vilnius—the capital of the formerly Soviet-occupied Baltic country of Lithuania—a self-proclaimed “Republic of Užupis.” The Republic was established by a group of friends in a bar one night, in a fit of drunken, merry inspiration. They drew up a forty-onepoint constitution, proclaiming their rights, in equal measure, to happiness and sadness, to silence and sharing one’s mind, to eternity and each passing second. This rather admirable republic is to be found in the part of Vilnius known as the Other Bank.