I was 5 years old when I spent one of many summer vacations at my grandmother’s in Jekabpils, a small and sleepy Latvian town. I remember walking into a movie theater where she worked the ticket booth: that weekend, there was a local premiere of “Oliver Twist“ by Clive Donner. We passed the main lobby and headed into the “staff only” territory. The sound of wheezing and grunting was getting louder and louder, until Fagin-like figure emerged from the shadows. The drunkard painted posters for films three times my size.

It was there in that grim, dump, reeked of tobacco, tiniest of theatres where Oliver lived a grueling life of an orphan over and over again, that my interest in raw human condition has began. Føgra Book Boutique was established in 2022.