Minni Nurme


Minni Katharina Nurme was an Estonian writer.

Life and career

Born Minni Neumann, Nurme graduated from the girls' school in Viljandi in 1936. During World War II she lived behind Soviet lines; after the war she moved to Tallinn and worked as a freelance writer. Her first prose work was the 1939 novel Kentaurid. Two years later came the novel Ratastool. She turned more and more to poetry during the war, and in 1945 published her first poetry collection, Sünnimuld. Between her second and third collections came a ten-year hiatus, largely due to the harassment of Stalinist authorities. Nurme was also active as a translator, from Finnish and English.
Nurme's elder sister was the poet Salme Ekbaum. After she married in 1936, she was known until 1941 as Minni Raudsepp. In 1941 she married the writer Aadu Hint; the marriage was dissolved in 1958, but produced five children, three sons and two daughters. The divorce was a scandal in Estonia. Of these one, Eeva Park, later became a well-known writer.
Eeva Park's 1993 novel Tolm ja Tuul describes the breakup of her parent's marriage.

Works

Prose