Heroes of the Periphery
Review of the Looomingu Raamatukogu paperback edition (September 2020)

There is nothing to becoming a hero somewhere in a sparsely populated area - just move a little flower or just be there and the crown will be placed on your head with a bow. Is this said in real life or in jealous folklore or by whom? The characters in Armin Kõomägi's 24 mini-short stories are united by a great need to act and by their curiosity, they actively adjust the world and shift perspectives, whether for themselves or for the storyteller: cheerful Villu, Saaremaa yoga pensioners, writers with special psychological convictions, a determined lawn mower and a smooth polar bear. Life will get a new rhythm, that’s for sure.
"Heroes of the Periphery" is the author's fifth short prose collection. - translation of the Estonian language synopsis.

Armin Kõomägi's style is the 3-4 page short-short story which is usually satirical or ventures into the surreal. They often take unexpected tangents but they still have enough basis in reality to be a comment on our current life and culture. Sometimes they come with bizarre dark humour such as the stories of a murderous Roomba lawnmower or of the young bull calf whose dreams of procreation are cruelly cut short. A future space-age scavenger is seen to be picking up the debris from a future United States of Amazon. A future Estonian Prime Minister auctions off the entire country with the proceeds to be divided throughout the population in order to make everyone in the country rich.

There has been hardly any Kõomägi in translation yet, but I would think that his cynical humour would translate fairly well internationally without the need for extensive footnotes.

Trivia and Link
To the best of my knowledge, there is only a single translation of an Armin Kõomägi short story in English to date. This is Logisticians Anonymous which appeared in Best European Fiction 2012 (2011) ed, Aleksandar Hemon. The translation is reproduced at the Estonian Literature Centre website here. ( )