There’s a certain wry tone in Soviet comic fiction — sly, humorous, incredibly bleak, resigned, and also still managing to delight in the absolute absurdity of it all. It’s very specific, and if you’ve read any Soviet writers, you’ll know what I mean. This is the tone of The Seaside Café Metropolis by Antanas Sileika – a book published in 2025, but managing to capture the tone of Soviet fiction from these few decades after the formal end of the Soviet Union.
Set in Lithuania in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Emmet Argentine is the son of a Canadian woman who decided to commit to her ideals and go live in Vilnius, the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the USSR and still resistant to rule from Russia. Emmet, a trained chef who worked in the top hotels in Toronto, he finds himself an oddity in Vilnius. Useful to the regime, he’s allowed some freedoms, but also toes the line, keeping himself, his mother, and his staff safe. When he’s assigned to run a new café, modelled on the things that people might want from the West, he embraces it, even though the Seaside Café Metropolis is none of the things the name claims it is.
This novel reads more like a collection of connected short stories: each chapter is a self-contained tale about Emmet, the café, and the cast of characters who haunt the place. Each story is shaped around a meal – usually Emmet’s attempts to make something that appeals to Lithuanian tastebuds, reflects the limited ingredients he can get his hands on in the country, and also characterizes the kind of bohemian café he wants to run. Each chapter ends with a recipe for the central dish, usually with some commentary thrown in about how it had to actually be made in Lithuania.
This novel was so darkly hilarious that I spent the whole time reading it and chuckling. It was wildly entertaining and Sileika’s ability for such sly, dark humour is fantastic. Sometimes we need to laugh, and sometimes we need to laugh with a shadowy hint for a shadowy moment. This book is perfect for that latter need.
Antanas Sileika is a Canadian author of six previous books of fiction, as well as two memoirs. His collection of short stories, Buying on Time, was shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Toronto Book Award, and longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads in 2016. His books have repeatedly received starred reviews from Quill & Quire and have been listed among the one hundred best books of the year in The Globe and Mail. One of his novels, Provisionally Yours, was adapted into both a feature film and a television serial in Europe. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Publisher: Cormorant Books (September 27, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 294 pages
ISBN: 9781770868106
Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
