Birze, Miervaldis

(pseudonym of M. Bērzinš). Born Mar. 21, 1921, in Rujiena. Soviet Latvian writer.

Birze was imprisoned in a concentration camp during the fascist German occupation (1941–45). After the victory over fascist Germany he returned to Riga. He graduated from the University of Latvia in 1949 and worked as a doctor. The antifascist attitude characteristic of Birze’s work is clearly expressed in the novella The Water Flows Even Under the Ice (1957; State Prize of the Latvian SSR, 1958) and in the short-story collections How a Story Was Born (1961) and Memories, Memories. . . (1968), as well as in the plays That Was Not the Last Day (1961) and At the “Black Grouse” Inn (1965). Birze also wrote humorous short stories—the collections The Unlucky Dog (1959), The Wrong Diagnosis (1962), and Conversations Accidentally Overheard (1965)— and the novella The Hourglass (1964). His works have been translated into many different languages.