I Was Here. The First Arrest
            2008
         
        
     
    
        
            
															
                        
														
									                        
						                        
										
				                    
								
															                        
															
									                        
                            Publisher
                            Eesti Päevaleht
                         
														                    
								                    
												                    
								                    
				
             
            
         
        
     
    
        
        Synopsis
		Rights sold: Hungarian, Latvian, Macedonian, Russian
The story tells of 17-year-old Rass' development into a drug dealer, which he recorded three years later in police custody. The main character lives apart from his parents, and supports himself with casual work and petty theft. The environment where he grows up, in a dormitory suburb on the outskirts of town, is characterized by violence, crime, suicide, dysfunctional family relations, and alcoholic parents. Unlike his friends, Rass studies at high school, and dreams of a normal family life and a job as a doctor. Getting involved in the drug business almost by chance, he starts using methamphetamine, and commits the wildest acts imaginable while he is high on it. Events lead him into involvement with the mafia, and the lives of Rass and his pals are in serious danger. To pay off his mafia debts, he becomes involved in more crimes.
The book is energetic, tense, full of prison slang and obscenities, and at the same time very painful and raw. Even young people that are hardly likely to pick up a book will read it with interest.
Film: 
I Was Here, 2008    
 
    
	        
            More info
												1st edition 2005, 200 pp, ISBN 9985956524
3rd edition 2022, 200 pp, ISBN 9789916140758							        
 
	        
            Awards
												Award:
2004 Writers' Union Novel Competition, winner