„Hotel“ 

Have a happy couple of lovers found their niche in life where the mafia’s drugs and people-trade are prospering? The main characters of the novel Hotel, by Jonė Balčiūnaitė, answer this question: Caroline, the young and beautiful hotel administrator and her husband Edward who is on a peacekeeping mission in Iraq.

After seeing her husband off to war, Caroline feels unsafe. A regular visitor to the hotel spots her; from first sight, she is fragile and broken. Quickly, the man feigns pity for her, but in reality, he turns Caroline into his accomplice in the drug and prostitution trade, and later, into a victim who knows too much. Returning from war, Edward can do nothing to save her. He realizes too late that he must not only fight a foreign war, but also one at home.

The novel Hotel is a book about modern day reality, material greed, moral neglect and a thirst for kindness and humanity. The hotel is a miniature planet around which their clients’ pleasant lives rotate and near it, the cynicism and dirty transactions of the money generation is prospering and the narcotic business and prostitution are in full swing. It is the hidden luxurious world where society’s most glaring vices concentrate. From the first page to the last, the plot weaves and depicts the portraits of the actors as the author avoids moralizing. The novel in all its essence protests against reality – where the absurd situations of life are more powerful than the individuals’ efforts to resist them.