Corinna Harfouch & Hideyo Harada: Oktober 2026

His life was marked by the catastrophes of the twentieth century. Born in 1910 in what is now Poland and raised in Russia, he belonged to the generation that sought to rebuild Lithuania after it gained independence between the world wars. After participating in the uprising against the Soviet occupation, Škėma fled to Germany, where he was initially interned but was later able to emigrate to America. Since, as an exile, his works were not permitted to be published in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, they did not find their way back to Lithuania until the era of perestroika in the late 1980s and have since been rediscovered in his homeland.

“This book contains one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching love stories I know,” says Corinna Harfouch, who is now bringing Škėma’s novel to the stage together with Hideyo Harada in a moving collage of words and music.

Here, Škėma’s intense connection to music—featuring works by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, Čiurlionis, Bartók, and Stravinsky—becomes both a literary and musical experience.