Tauno Vahter

Tauno Vahter (born 18 February 1978) is a publisher, prose writer, and translator.

Vahter was born and attended school in Tallinn and studied public administration at the University of Tartu. He has been working in the publishing company Tänapäev since 2008 as its chief editor. His brother is journalist and documentary-book author Tarmo Vahter.

At the beginning of his literary career, he published short stories in the press. Some of them have been gathered into the collection Pikaajaline kokkusaamine (‘Long-lasting Get-together’, 2020). Among others, the collection includes Taevas Tartu kohal (‘The Sky Above Tartu’), which received the Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Award in 2021. The novel Madis Jeffersoni 11 põgenemist (‘Madis Jefferson’s 11 Escapes’, 2021), which received the Eduard Vilde Prize in Literature in 2022, is based on real-life events. It depicts the sometimes tragicomic adventures of Johannes Lapmann, who tried to escape from the Soviet Union several times. Vahter stands out as a fluent storyteller with a good-natured sense of humour. This is also noticeable in the novel Hea venelane (‘The Good Russian’, 2022), which depicts the turbulent changes of the early 1990s and the world of esotericism and psychics.

Vahter has translated some Finnish writers’ novels — Sofi Oksanen’s Stalin’s Cows and Arto Paasilinna’s The Best Village in the World — into Estonian.

He has participated in memory quizzes and won several champion titles, written essays, opinion columns and literary, film and theatre reviews.

A. K. (Translated by I. A.)

Books in Estonian

Novels
Madis Jeffersoni 11 põgenemist. Tallinn: Tänapäev, 2021, 253 lk
Hea venelane. Tallinn: Tänapäev, 2022, 242 lk

Short prose
Pikaajaline kokkusaamine. Tallinn: Tänapäev, 2020, 182 lk