The Boy Who Could See in the Dark

In a house without light, a child is the one who guides their blind parents. A moving account of growth, love, and resilience.

Jēkabs is a child. His parents are blind.

Jēkabs is the son of blind parents, and grows up seeing the world for them, interpreting it and narrating events in the first person, with honesty and courage, but also with shrewdness and humor, fitting the family's daily life into his coming of age, absorbing problems, challenges and, as he enters adolescence, desires; above all one: to be just a normal child and be able to do crazy things without worrying about responsibilities.

This admirable novel by the Latvian Rasa Bugavičute-Pēce, full of moving contrasts about parenting, disability and sociability, now and then from the perspective of a child who wants to help their parents, and now from the perspective of the mother, frightened and brave, who wants to support her son, is a journey into the heart and humanity of any reader.

The Boy Who Sees in the Dark was adapted for the theatre in Latvia, directed by Valters Sīlis, one of the most exciting artists of the new generation of Baltic directors. The book and the play won the Liepāja Culture Award, for their quality and success at the Latvian National Theatre. Translated into Lithuanian, Estonian, Armenian, German, Turkish and, now, Portuguese (directly from Latvian), the work also won the Latvian Jānis Baltvilks Award, awarded to children's and young adult literature, and was included in the international White Ravens catalogue, which highlights books in this category. The author and the book were also selected as Latvia's candidates for the European Union Prize for Literature.