Mateřské mléko – Ikstenová Nora (2023)

"Three generations of women, three different fates complicated by a complex era and their relationships. The alternating narration of mother and daughter begins and ends during the Soviet period in Latvia. The focus is on the mother, an extraordinarily gifted doctor and intellectual, who refuses to breastfeed her newborn daughter so as not to poison her with her own misfortune. Many years later, she finds herself in forced exile in the countryside, where the roles are reversed: the daughter becomes the maternal caregiver of her depressed mother. The daughter finds strength and comfort in a loving relationship with her distant grandmother. The daughter embodies a hopeful outlook for the future, while the grandmother offers a long view of Latvian history. The symbolic layer of the novel cannot be overlooked, yet the core of the story remains full-bodied, engaging, and powerful. The novel Maternal Milk by a leading Baltic writer has become a phenomenon, published in twenty countries, and a film adaptation is coming to international distribution, which recorded record attendance in its home country of Latvia. It is released with the support of the Latvian Literary Platform."