Peedu Saar

 

Peedu Saar (born 15 IV 1985) is a prose writer.

He was born in Tartu and graduated from the University of Tartu in 2007 as a biologist. Saar works as a botanist at the Estonian University of Life Sciences in Tartu and is a specialist at the Estonian Seminatural Community Conservation Association. His brother is writer and translator Anti Saar.

Peedu Saar’s first texts appeared in the journal Värske Rõhk under a pseudonym. Saar’s first book, the short novel Pascual appeared in 2018 (the name ‘Pascual’ has been taken from the book La familia de Pascual Duarte by the Spanish writer Camilo José Cela, who is significant for Saar). In 2019, Saar published the short novel Mailased (‘Speedwells’). Both books have been written in the first person. In the novel Pascual, the first-person narrator roams around London and finds himself in extraordinary situations and places. The protagonist of the novel Mailased is a biologist who lives in Tartu and wanders around Estonia against the background of a sensitive and fascinating story of unfortunate love.

In the short novel Loomad (‘Animals’, 2022), people often smoothly transform into animals and vice versa. The motif of rootlessness and being on the road also characterizes the protagonists in this work. In the novel Kastimees (‘The Box Man’, 2025), which bears the same title as Kobo Abe’s novel from 1973, the main character, inspired by this Japanese modernist classic, feels an irresistible desire to go to London, spend time in a cardboard box and watch life pass by, while at other moments simply drifting around in the big city. And so he does.

L. P. (Translated by I. A.)

 

Books in Estonian

Novels and novellas
Pascual. Tallinn: Pilgrim, 2018. 78 lk.
Mailased. Tallinn: Paradiis, 2019. 182 lk.
Loomad. Tallinn: SA Kultuurileht (Loomingu Raamatukogu), 2022. 90 lk.
Kastimees. Tallinn: Paradiis, 2025. 222 lk.