VILNIUS City of Strangers explores the history of Vilnius, from its legendary beginnings in the fourteenth century to the twentieth century dramas of wars, revolutions and massacres, through the insightful impressions of foreign travelers. Napoleon, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Döblin, Forster, Bakhtin, and Brodsky; these voices – among others equally compelling, though lesser known – reveal essential meanings of Europe in their narratives of encounter with the threshold city. Laimonas Briedis has woven their letters, diaries, utterances and reflections into a riveting and intimate story exhibiting a deep understanding of the Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and German identities of the place, as well as its centrality in European Jewish culture. This book is a veritable hall of mirrors, which yields an illuminating vision of Vilnius and an exceptional window on Europe.

“...in Laimonas Briedis's subtle and evocative book ...Vanished civilisations and lost empires leave a city stalked by horror and steeped in wonder.” THE ECONOMIST

Laimonas Briedis is a native of Vilnius, Lithuania, but currently makes his home in Vancouver, Canada. He holds a doctoral degree in human geography from the University of British Columbia and did his postdoctoral research in the History Dept. of the University of Toronto.

His Book, Vilnius, City of Strangers has received glowing reviews across the English speaking world and is a perennial non-fiction best seller in Lithuania (both in the original English and in the Lithuanian translation.) having been reprinted 5 times.

Briedis is a frequent teacher at the Summer Literary Seminar in Vilnius initiated by Concordia University (of Montreal), and has just completed a major project on digitally mapping the literary history of Vilnius in connection with Vilnius University.

His research and writings have consistently focused on the complex fabric of Lithuanian history in relation to Europe and the world; linking insiders and outsiders, recent years and the deep past, and a multitude of religions and language groups. He has tracked the various diasporas of Lithuania across Europe and North America and as far beyond as Jerusalem and Shanghai.