Truth and Justice comprises five volumes, which have no individual titles (some were added in translation). Since vol. 3 contains a description about the Russian Revolution of 1905, which is not informed by ideology but by an existential attention to individual suffering, it was often combined with vol. 2 by Soviet censorship.
Tammsaare was born in Järvamaa, in the municipality of Albu, village of Vetepere, the son of a farmer. He came from a poor background, but managed to collect enough money for his education. More so his family was quite enlightened for the time, with his father for instance ordering newspapers, which most Estonian farmers didn't. He studied in Väike-Maarja and Tartu in Hugo Treffner's Gymnasium, and afterwards at the University of Tartu, where he studied law. Tammsaare's studies were interrupted by tuberculosis in 1911. He spent over a year in a sanatorium in Sochi — where his memorial house is open to the public — and the following six years in his brother's farm in Koitjärve, Estonia (now part of Põhja-Kõrvemaa Nature Reserve), reading works of Cervantes, Shakespeare and Homer. His younger sister, Maria Hansen, was the mother of Tammaare's nephew, actor Arno Suurorg.
Tammsaare was interested in philosophy and psychology. His novels reflect the ideas of Bergson, Jung and Freud . He was, however, sceptical about cosmopolitanism. “European culture”, he wrote “is something to be overcome if one wishes to see the triumph of love, justice and humanity spoken of so glibly.” Like Carl Robert Jakobson and Jaan Tõnisson's Tartu Renaissance group, he believed that Estonian culture was best served by farmers and intellectuals from rural backgrounds. His work was influenced( at various stages) by Oscar Wilde, Knut Hamsun and André Gide, but, above all, by the Russian realists. “In the whole of world literature," said Tammsaare, I have never read anything to compare to the Russians... there is no one to compare to Tolstoy, Dostoievsky or Gogol"... Dostoievsky “really disturbed me: I lived in a waking dream under his influence. I was especially gripped by Crime and punishment (reference: A.H Tammsaare. L. Siimisker, A.Palm. Eesti Rammat. Tallinn 1978. P:64)
Truth and Justice was not translated into English until 2014, when Haute Culture Books published the first volume of the saga under the name "Andres and Pearu". There are two complete translations into German and one each into French, Latvian, and Czech. Volume 1 has also been translated into Finnish, Polish, and Hungarian (with the title, Orcad veritekevel).
